On The Relationship Between Technology Of Human Reproductive Cloning And Human Dignity

The development of biotechnology has influenced and changed the destiny of mankind. As one of typical biotechnology, human reproductive cloning (HRC) raises legal, science, ethics, philosophy, religion and other areas of controversy. The reaction of the international community has tended to prohibit HRC. One of the most important reasons is that HRC is contrary to human dignity. The UDHGHR was adopted by the 29th Session of the UNESCO General Conference and encompasses five core principles. One of the most important principles is to respect for human dignity. But human dignity appears in somewhat so profound and abstract that it often has different meanings both in international instruments and national law. This essay aims to clarify the meaning of human dignity and to analyze the relationship between HRC and human dignity.As a constitutional concept, human dignity firstly appeared in the German Constitution, in which Article 1 clearly announces human dignity that is considered the highest value of the German Constitution. This concept mainly due to the concept of Christian thought, philosophy of Kant and reflection for the Nazi tyranny. For human dignity, it is firstly emphasized that human dignity stems from an individual's autonomous capacity to make moral judgments. Second, the people themselves are the goal, respecting for human beings is not to view people as a means or tools. Again, human dignity is not only a subjective right, but also an objective value. To some extent, it reflects and represents the common values and interests of human society, such as a species we accord. Compared to the first two levels of human dignity in terms of individualism, the objective value has a transcendent and public nature.To analyze the relationship between HRC and human dignity, we need to distinguish the motives of technology, the technology itself and results of technology. Discussion of the issue usually concentrated in the latter two aspects, and paid little attention to the motivation. It mainly because that the motivation behind an action is not easy to be identified, and law generally does not concern motivation but focuses only on the act itself.First, individual autonomy and self-determination is foundation of human dignity. Only an act under the domination of one person's subjective intent, we can say that the person himself governs his behavior. It is commonly argued that, were an individual created by HRC, he or she would experience a recognizable loss of autonomy resulting from the preselected nature of his or her genome. In fact, all behavioral characteristics were generated both environmentally and genically. HRC may not reduce or restrict the autonomy of human being, and violate human dignity.Second, the whole essence of HRC is to preselect the genome of a future person. There are four conceivable primary reasons why one might want to use HRC:to replace a dead child or fetus, to select perceived favorable human characteristics, to treat infertility, and create a new person who could also be a suitable organ donor. The relationship between HRC and human dignity is a very complex issue in terms of different motivations of human cloning. It is difficult to make a judgment whether HRC violating human dignity.Again, human dignity becomes public, collective and prescribed by social norms and is accepting the social rules and norms associated with social constraint. Individual autonomy-based human dignity should be compatible with public responsibility and social common value. The autonomy facet of group or social dignity is best protected by ensuring that, individually, everyone is brought into being with an essentially random genome. To protect diversity of species is a total human interests and values, in this sense, HRC violates the diversity, random of species and therefore destroys human dignity.