Crafting a Cloning Policy: From Dolly to Stem
Cells
By Andrea L. Bonnicksen
Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC
2002, 232 pp., $39.95, $21.95
(paperback)
REVIEWED BY EDWARD R. MARTIN
In the final paragraphs of Crafting a Cloning Policy: From Dolly to Stem
Cells, Andrea L. Bonnicksen employs two different metaphors for the present
moment vis-à-vis cloning and cloning policy. On one hand, the moment
is like a trolley car perched on a hill in San Francisco: Because cloning policy
will soon be gathering great speed as it hurtles into the future, whoever guides
that policy had better be prepared to make split-second policy decisions, because
those decisions will shape much of the biological science to come. In the author's
alternative vision, cloning policy is like an Amtrak train chugging across Illinois:
The engine, powered by both science and wise policy, moves confidently over
the flat land, giving its passengers a clear view of the sights and developments
that lie ahead.
Bonnicksen, a political science professor at Northern Illinois University,
DeKalb, IL, finds truth in both metaphors, but she also finds both a little
lacking. This is her strength in this book—a kind of analytical criticism
coupled with a salvaging optimism. Fortunately, the optimism prevails and makes
Crafting a Cloning Policy a contribution to the field—and a pleasant
read.
The focus of the book is helpfully provided by Bonnicksen's self-imposed
limits. First, she focuses her work on the policy efforts (both in the United
States and in other nations) regarding one aspect of the field of reproductive
and genetic technologies: somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). This choice
seems to have been made partly for convenience and partly because of the attention
SCNT received after the effective cloning of the lamb Dolly in Scotland in mid-1996.
Second, again taking a cue from the attention given to SCNT after Dolly, Bonnicksen
limits her analysis of policy changes (and attempted changes) to the period
1997-1999. These are helpful limits that give the book a framework from which
Bonnicksen makes frequent in-depth forays into policy changes and possibilities.
Bonnicksen is motivated, she says, by the imminent "intersecting reproductive
and genetic technologies still on the horizon," and her examination of
cloning policy is therefore an attempt to shed light on resources with which
society might address this future. It is this future to which she often refers—that
which lies around the next bend (or, rather, in the decade just ahead). It is
a future that should give policymakers pause and, one hopes, thereby ward off
the kind of policy arrogance that Bonnicksen sees creeping into policy debates.
Her attention to the issues is straightforward and direct. And because she has
paid close attention to the issues, she writes with prose that is clear and
a vocabulary that is uncluttered; an audience of lawmakers or experienced scientists
could find satisfaction in her writing and analysis.
After two excellent introductory chapters describing the landscape of cloning
policy, Bonnicksen, in chapters 3 through 5 (addressing the years 1997, 1998,
and 1999 respectively) demonstrates her familiarity with the recent history
of federal legislationýin clear, crisp analysis. In particular, chapter
5 (1998) is dense with descriptions of various attempts to develop policy in
Congress, at the National Institutes of Health, and through the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission. Chapter 6—"Administratýve Oversight: Food
and Drug Administration"—is particularly interesting; in it Bonnicksen
shows that the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory scheme operates
as a certain type of cloning policy; in the absence of legislative enactments,
it is an effective if uneven policy. In chapter 7, "Oversight through Federal
Research Funding," Bonnicksen catalogues the influence of federal funding
in policymaking. She concludes rightly (if less strongly than she might have)
that this kind of "oversight" is sometimes ineffective, driven too
often by dollars rather than principles. However, it is also true that if cloning
received fewer dollars and more private ones, it would be less accessible to
regulation.
Two later chapters survey efforts at cloning policy in state legislatures,
state and federal courts (chapter 8) and some international cloning policies
(chapter 9). These chapters are a sort of "flyover" that precedes
the concluding chapter—perhaps Bonniýksen's best—"Toward
Responsible Policymaking." Here, the book is summarized and certain trends
are noted. The author describes four legislative approaches and debates their
various merits. Although certain tentative conclusions are drawn—one of
which is: "[If] the United States bows out of SCNT technology altogether
by making it illegal, the nation has denied itself a leadership role in policy
development"—Bonnicksen leaves lots of questions asked but unanswered.
Ultimately, Bonnicksen is not offering the solution—or even a solution—to
the cloning policy problem. At times, the reader may wish to hear more editorial
comment from her: to learn what she thinks and why. However, as a result of
her careful description, the reader does come to see what seems to work and
what the future might hold. In this practical sense, her book is helpful because
it gives a complete tour d'horizon, as far as cloning policy choices
are concerned, and encourages efforts to shape informed policy. If we are fortunate,
Bonnicksen will continue employing her talents in the explication of such issues—and
cloning policies will develop a clarity like that shown by the analysis in this
book.
Edward R. Martin
Bryan Cave, LLP
Washington, DC
Mr. Martin is the former director, Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of St.
Louis, and former clerk, United States Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit
Copyright © 2003 by the Catholic Health Association of the United States
For reprint permission, contact Betty Crosby or call (314) 253-3477.