Note: The ethical judgments on this page refer exclusively to the action — never to the person who performs it or who came into existence through it. A cloned human being possesses full ontological dignity and full personhood. Cf. Note on ethical judgments (German).
Reproductive cloning is a somatic cell nuclear transfer aimed at bringing to birth a human being whose nuclear genome coincides with that of another embryo, foetus, living person, or deceased person.
Ontological classification
- is subclass of: somatic cell nuclear transfer
- is: intrinsically evil act
- is: instrumentalization
- violates: Personalist Norm
- produces: an identical nuclear genome — the feature on which every prohibition turns
Ethical assessment
The line of justification begins with ontological dignity: it is the inalienable, objective worth of the person and the sufficient ground of the Personalist Norm — the person is to be affirmed and loved for her own sake. This norm is violated by instrumentalization and by oblivion of the person. Both forms of violation are present here, at differing depths.
Oblivion of the person: brought forth on account of characteristics
Oblivion of the person is, on this ontology, not malice but the person dropping out of view behind her characteristics: she is affirmed not for her own sake but for what she brings with her.
Reproductive cloning is the limiting case of this structure. A human being is not conceived but manufactured to specification: his genetic profile is the reason for his production. The opposition of begetting and making is not new here — it is the guiding distinction in Oliver O’Donovan (Begotten or Made?, 1984) and in Leon Kass; what is new is only the sharpening to specification. This reverses the order the Personalist Norm requires. Not: a human being is there and is affirmed for his own sake. But: a particular genome is wanted, and accordingly a human being is produced who bears it. The affirmation goes to the characteristic; the person is its bearer.
Instrumentalization: disposing over another
To this is added the independent finding of instrumentalization. Whoever determines in advance the genetic endowment of another human being disposes over that human being in a respect he can never choose and never revise. He thereby becomes a means to an alien end — not in what happens to him, but in what he is.
Two clarifications belong here, because they are regularly confused. First: the cloned human being is a complete person with inalienable dignity. The condemnation strikes the action, never its result. Second: no identical person arises, but a human being with identical genetic endowment. The spiritual substance is not something that could be copied — personal identity is no genetic magnitude.
What happens along the way
The procedure presupposes egg donation and thereby instrumentalizes a second person, the donor (see somatic cell nuclear transfer). And it regularly produces embryos that are not transferred: persons in the First Dimension whose right to life is violated.
By the fontes moralitatis the object of an action determines its moral species — what the agent knowingly and willingly does, independently of intention and circumstances. The object here is the bringing forth of a human being to genetic specification. Reproductive cloning is therefore an intrinsically evil act; a good intention — grieving parents, a wish for a child — changes nothing.
Corroboration from the magisterial tradition, as confirmation and not as ground of the judgment: Donum vitae I,6 rejects the production of a human being without connection to sexuality; Dignitas personae 29 speaks of a form of biological slavery and of a grave offence against dignity and equality; the Pontifical Academy for Life stated in 1997 that the spiritual soul can neither be generated nor manufactured nor cloned.
The legal situation
Reproductive cloning is widely prohibited internationally, but the prohibition techniques differ considerably:
- In Germany the production itself is criminal, not merely the transfer, and there is no research exemption.
- The European Additional Protocol of 1998 prohibits any intervention seeking a human being genetically identical to another and expressly defines identity via the nuclear gene set — divergent mitochondrial DNA therefore does not exclude identity.
- The 1997 UNESCO Declaration prohibits in Article 11 generically those practices contrary to human dignity, naming reproductive cloning expressly as an example (“such as”) — it is the only form of cloning named, but not an exhaustive prohibition of that form alone. The 2005 UN Declaration, with its formula “inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity,” leaves open what is covered. Both are legally non-binding.
- In the United Kingdom the transfer is prohibited, while research on the nuclear-transfer embryo is permitted under licence.
- In the United States there is no federal prohibition; all legislative attempts failed because advocates of a purely reproductive ban and advocates of a total ban could not agree.
Why the demarcation has become practical
Every prohibition turns on the feature of identity of the nuclear genome. Precisely there its limit shows: procedures that do not copy a body cell but halve it and combine it with a foreign chromosome set — such as mitomeiosis — do not meet the criterion. The human being thereby produced carries a random half of the donor genome plus a sperm’s chromosome set and is identical with no one.
This is not a quibble but a structural finding: technical development undercuts provisions tailored to a different procedure. The same observation holds for the shift from deletion to epigenetic editing at imprinting regions — where nothing is cut, nothing is altered in the letter, though much is in substance.
The strongest objection
The most serious objection is the twin analogy: an identical twin shares his nuclear genome entirely with another human being, without anyone speaking of a violation of his dignity. If genetic uniqueness is not constitutive of personhood — and on this ontology it is not, since the person is spiritual substance and not her genome — then its absence cannot ground a violation either.
The objection tells, but it strikes an argument not made here. The violation lies not in the state of genetic identity but in the act of disposal. With the twin no one determined the characteristics; with cloning someone did. Oblivion of the person is on this ontology a category concerning the ground of affirmation, not one concerning biological constitution: what matters is whether a human being is affirmed for his own sake or brought forth on account of a characteristic. Precisely for that reason the twin is no counter-example — and precisely for that reason a cloned human being, once here, would be a person without any qualification.
Whoever wishes to unsettle the assessment must therefore show that bringing forth to specification is not a disposal over the one brought forth. That is the real fault line — not the question of twins.
See also
- Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT)
- Mitomeiosis — why the cloning provision does not apply there
- In Vitro Gametogenesis
- Germline
- Instrumentalization, Personalist Norm
- Genetic Technology, Eugenic Selection
- Embryo, Ontological Dignity
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology. Research as of 27 July 2026.
Further sources:
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (1987): Donum vitae, I,6.
- Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (2008): Dignitas personae, nn. 28–30.
- Pontifical Academy for Life (1997): Reflections on Cloning.
- O’Donovan, Oliver (1984): Begotten or Made? Oxford: Clarendon Press (the guiding distinction between begetting and making).
- Council of Europe (1998): Additional Protocol to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine, on the Prohibition of Cloning Human Beings (ETS No. 168), Paris, 12 January 1998.
- UNESCO (1997): Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, Art. 11.
- United Nations (2005): United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning, Resolution 59/280 of 8 March 2005.