Slippery slopes and cloning

It's only a matter of time before the first human is cloned. Or so we are told.

This week's news that two teams in America are competing to produce the first cloned embryo for the development of new therapies, brought with it the familiar cries that cloned babies are just around the corner. Cloning human embryos, the critics say, is just the first step on the slippery slope towards the widespread production of cloned babies.

The slippery slope is a well-known rhetorical device in debates on reproductive technologies. But whilst those who do not have such a doom-laden vision of the future often reject slippery slope arguments, the logic of such notions is rarely questioned.

The idea that because something can happen, it will inevitably happen seems, on the face of it, to be perfectly obvious. But why? Just because we can do something, does that necessarily mean that we are going to do it? Of course not. There are a whole range of awful things that human beings could do to one another, but they usually take the decision not to carry them out. The advent of something which might make performing horrific acts more easy does not necessarily lead to our doing so. Indeed, it might remind us that such a thing is possible and make us more determined not to proceed down that road. In the context of human cloning, it could be argued that all the talk of the horrors of cloned babies has made society more resolute in its opposition it.

The other thing to point out about slippery slopes is that they almost never come true. When the first baby was born as a result of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), the celebration was soon overshadowed by slippery slope fears. In the UK, the Daily Mail - the newspaper which championed Louise Brown's birth - raised concerns: 'Amid the rejoicing there are those who shiver involuntarily. "Where," they ask, "is it going to end?".'

Twenty-one years later, the predictions about babies in bottles and genetically manipulated embryos have not come true. Despite the rhetoric, the Brave New World described in the late 1970s is no nearer to reality today than it was then.

  The most noticeable feature of slippery slopes is that they always seem to lead to awful things that few of us want to come true. I have my own slippery slope. I believe that the production of the first cloned embryo has put us on an inexorable slide towards a future where a whole host of human diseases are easily cured. What a chilling prospect!