First, the research object of criminology
In criminology, according to the definition of functional crime, crime refers to the behavior with serious social harm; In other words, criminology is not a subject to study all socially harmful behaviors, and only those behaviors with serious social harm belong to the crime scope of criminology research.
The so-called harm means that the interests of the object are damaged or in a dangerous state. The interests of the object are all kinds of needs expressed through various social relations. The interests or needs of the object can be divided into public interests, group interests and personal interests. The so-called public interest refers to the dependence and needs of all people (individuals and groups) on the objective conditions of their survival and development under specific time and space conditions. Group interests are the special interests of specific collectives, organizations, classes and strata after excluding the interests of other groups. Personal interests are the interests of a specific individual after excluding the interests of others. For people, the most important and basic interest is the public interest. Only when the public interest is guaranteed can we talk about pursuing the special interests of groups and individuals. Then people's important interests are group interests and individual interests respectively. According to the definition of functional crime, only those behaviors that harm or threaten public interests and group interests are behaviors with serious social harm and are the objects of criminology research. [1] The definition of functional crime "reveals the basis of criminal punishment" [2].
Second, bring reproductive cloning into the legal argumentation in the field of criminology research.
Only those behaviors that harm or threaten public interests and group interests are the objects of criminology research. Therefore, if we want to prove that reproductive cloning can be the research object of criminology, we need to prove that reproductive cloning has damaged or threatened the interests of the public and the interests of the group.
(a) the specific embodiment of reproductive cloning that harms or threatens the public interest.
1. The serious insecurity of human cloning technology harms or threatens the interests of the public, causing great public panic about life safety.
Somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning technology involves subcellular operation. Compared with in vitro fertilization and other cell-level operations, the risk of accidental damage to nuclear genetic material of the former is significantly higher than that of the latter. From a technical point of view, people can't solve the security problem of human cloning except relying on scientific experiments again and again. Because everyone is the sacred subject of rights, no one wants to regard others-at the expense of life and happiness-as the experimental object of scientific research and as a simple number in the statistical results of scientific research. Even after the accumulation of countless experiences in the future, human cloning will still have a certain failure rate. No matter how low the failure rate is, the progress of human civilization should not be at the expense of these unfortunate deformed embryos or babies.
British scientists cloned Dolly the sheep after 277 failures. Dolly has always been a mother through bisexual reproduction, but unfortunately, Dolly was euthanized on February 14, 2003, and she only lived in this world for six years. Dolly was euthanized because of premature senility and lung disease. As early as1June, 1999, Paul Hills of Scottish PPL Biotechnology Medical Company and others found that the telomeres in Dolly's cells were 20% shorter than expected, almost the same as her 9-year-old mother (ewe who provided the nucleus), indicating that Dolly had prematurely aged. With the birth of Dolly, all kinds of cloned animals came from all over the world. It was a beautiful moment when they were born, but soon they suffered from one disease or another.
However, in the face of such a realistic ethical problem that human cloning experiments will lead to a large number of deformed and disabled babies, some of our scientists who support human cloning research have never shown the slightest values and at least moral conscience. Their answer is still the extremely indifferent and irresponsible sentence: "The immaturity of technology can only be solved by research and development"! Just like the dark clouds that haunted people during Nazi concentration camps, the human experiments conducted by the Japanese 73 1 troops during World War II, the serious insecurity of reproductive cloning technology at present will cause great panic to the public about life safety and cause great damage and threat to the public interests.
2. Human cloning is a reaction to human evolution, which harms the interests of the whole human group, specifically the public interests of a country.
From the perspective of biological evolution, the fittest survive and the unsuitable are eliminated. Sexual reproduction is one of the most important ways for humans and other advanced organisms to adapt to the environment, survive and continue their populations. Its advantages are as follows:
First, the combination of the two sexes can combine the advantages of both sexes and be passed down from generation to generation through genetic inheritance. Secondly, the combination of the two sexes can make up for and cover up the genetic defects of their parents and avoid the occurrence of diseases. However, human cloning is the opposite of sexual reproduction. It only uses the genetic material of one parent to reproduce offspring (asexual reproduction), loses the opportunity to combine with the opposite sex and exchange excellent genes, and is easy to show the defective genes of one parent. The probability of such offspring being healthy is too small to be said to be a reaction and retrogression.
No matter what causes the sexual reproduction and survival of human beings and advanced creatures, it must be reasonable and irreversible, otherwise it will only lead people or creatures to retrogression and great destruction. We can imagine that if human cloning becomes a reality, it will mean the challenge of parthenogenesis to human bisexual reproduction, so the problem of sex will become a prominent problem. For thousands of years, one of the achievements created by the bisexual reproductive model of human beings and advanced animals is the love and combination of the two sexes. Sexual satisfaction and pleasure are of course the additional products of sexual reproduction, but since humans and advanced animals have evolved to this day, sex is by no means an addition to fertility, but the needs of humans and advanced animals, as the saying goes. Cloning human beings means that it is possible to cancel the combination of the two sexes and sex becomes unimportant or unnecessary. However, without sex, human society will inevitably collapse, and so will the biological world. Because today we can't go against the essence and instinct of human evolution to prohibit sex and sexual satisfaction. Women can't live without men, and men can't live without women. The whole human society is made up of men and women. Without sexual communication and satisfaction, human society will inevitably perish.
At the same time, because human cloning has returned to the low-level primitive asexual reproduction mode, human cloning will create new problems. Once there is a "landslide effect" (such as allowing human cloning, this possibility is great. Hundreds of people have asked Antinori and others to clone it, or expressed their willingness to be "surrogate mothers" or "voluntary mothers", which shows that human cloning is indeed a broad market. Many people will join this market for one reason or another. Once the "floodgate" of human cloning is opened, it may cause a flood. If many clones are born, it will also lead to uncontrollable social chaos. This will be related to the fundamental and long-term interests of human society.
(2) Reproductive cloning is a concrete manifestation that it harms or threatens the interests of the cloned population, that is, it deprives the cloned population of its unique and unique rights and leads to other serious social problems.
There are several reasons why people have the idea of human cloning, besides the curiosity of scientists: First, to serve families who are about to lose their loved ones, or to satisfy infertile couples to have children. Second, in memory of the old friend. Third, in order to let single men and women leave their offspring.
No matter which of the above reasons, it will damage the uniqueness and uniqueness rights that every newly born clone should enjoy, and even endanger the diversity of human gene pool [4]. If the expansion of human cloning forms a new generation of population, it will attract attention in society, because the new generation of human cloning is a "new person" created by artificial technology of asexual reproduction, and such a "new person" can easily become an identifiable group with its "unnatural" role, thus leading to some potential discrimination in society. More importantly, if the new generation of clones lack enough sense of self-identity, their potential inferiority and other psychological conditions will affect their integrity and soundness, and then affect their getting along, communication and acceptance with others.
1. The first reason for cloning human beings is that it can serve families who are about to lose their loved ones or satisfy infertile couples to have children. An American couple are supporters of human cloning. Their daughter has leukemia and will die soon, so they hope to copy another daughter for them by cloning technology. But if the couple knew the truth about cloning, they might not make such a request. If their daughter is cloned, it won't be long before their daughter will still get leukemia, and it will be more serious. Because the cloned daughter is the next generation, she only has her own genetic material in her body, and defective genes are easier to express and expose, so she is more likely to get sick and get sick.
There is also a saying that cloning is used to cultivate offspring for infertile couples. For example, if the husband's sperm quality is poor or there is no sperm, and both husband and wife are unwilling to use other people's sperm, they can clone a offspring only with their wife's eggs. So is this cloning desirable? From the nature of cloning, the child cloned in this way is also a person with a low quality of life. Because he (she) only has the genetic material of one parent, it is impossible to concentrate the excellent genes in the bisexual genetic material, so the defective genes are easy to be exposed and displayed, leading to individual illness and poor physical fitness.
If we start from the interests of human cloning, not from the interests of our living people, and "put ourselves in other's shoes" for the purpose of "cloning human beings to let infertile couples leave their offspring", we will realize that although reproductive cloning satisfies parents' desire to leave their offspring, its uniqueness and uniqueness have been seriously damaged for the cloned offspring, because his genes are not a brand-new genome recombined from parents' genes like ordinary people. Compared with ordinary people born by natural reproduction, the "freedom" and "openness" of cloned people in genetic characteristics are fundamentally limited. Although we can't completely deny his uniqueness and uniqueness, it is definitely a big discount. Although in the future social life, under the influence of environment, times and other factors, he can show his unique talents, achievements and contributions through his own efforts, but he can never get rid of the predetermined restrictions on genetic characteristics, which are artificial and caused by the desire of his gene donors to keep their offspring.
This means that in order to meet the needs of infertile couples to have children, we must sacrifice the complete openness, uniqueness and uniqueness of children in natural attributes and genetic characteristics, and we must sacrifice their uniqueness and uniqueness. Thought-provoking. In the balance between parents' desire to keep their offspring and their children's complete uniqueness and unique rights in the new genome, should the balance naturally turn to their parents? People can't help asking, why should human cloning be subject to such restrictions and constraints? He is also a citizen, why can he lose the right to be completely open, unique and unique in genetic characteristics? [5]
2. In memory of old friends. An old friend can't come back to life, but if it is cloned, the cloned person has the same shape as the old friend, which can arouse people's memories and thoughts of the old friend and satisfy their deep nostalgia [6].
In the act of cloning human body for this purpose, it not only deprives the cloned person of uniqueness and uniqueness rights, but also makes the cloned person's instrumental status manifest. This is because the shape (size, constitution) of the cloned human has been determined before birth. He is not allowed and can't have his own appearance, but must take the shape of his forerunner. The decider of cloning behavior is not interested in clones as independent newcomers, but in the reproduction, even resurrection and regeneration of the pioneers. People compare the clone with its forerunner all the time, expecting that the clone is as similar as the original, and the clone will never get rid of the shadow of the forerunner. People not only hope that the clone will reappear as a pioneer, but also hope that he has his own soul. Although people can't bring pioneers back to life, they hope to bring them back to life by cloning people. However, human cloning shoulders the mission of reviving its pioneers. He comes from and because of his forerunner, so that his lifelong task, survival value and all his destiny are predetermined by outsiders, and this predetermined decision has nothing to do with his self-will, his own interests, his uniqueness and the need for self-realization. If he achieves something, people will say it is due to his gene donor. If he doesn't do well, people will blame him for being inferior to his predecessor. He can't imagine how much of his life belongs to him except as a replica of the forerunner and as a tool for people to remember the forerunner. When people clone a dead citizen in order to revive him, they are also burying another citizen's own desires, needs, rights and survival value.
3. In order to enable single men and women to have offspring [7]. Advocates (such as American legal philosopher Dworkin and Italian doctor Antinori) believe that everyone has the right and freedom to bear children, and bearing children is even regarded as the most important part of the meaning and value of his life, so the right to bear children is one of the "natural human rights". The reproductive rights are not limited to married men and women, but also include "single aristocrats". Cloning oneself is one of the ways for these single men and women to practice their reproductive rights. On the other hand, everyone's DNA is his private property, and every citizen has the right to decide when and how to copy it. It should be said that the idea that individuals have reproductive rights and have the right to "continue" their lives in some way is not new. Before cloning technology came into people's sight, there were newspaper reports that a 60-year-old woman was pregnant with a baby by using test-tube technology, and a male condemned man asked to leave semen before execution, so that his wife could get pregnant through artificial insemination and realize the wish of carrying on the family line. Therefore, the problem of realizing the reproductive rights of single aristocrats through cloning technology is not a unique ethical problem of cloning, but an ethical conflict between the reproductive rights of single men and women and the rights of their descendants, which is also related to test tube technology and artificial insemination technology. In short, it is a generalized ethical issue of the legitimacy of single male and female descendants. There is no doubt that human beings have the desire and right to bear children, but the problem is that when this right is seriously related to the basic rights and needs of another individual (the offspring born), and may have a fundamental negative impact on the latter, the legitimacy of this right is no longer beyond doubt (according to the provisions of China's marriage law, in order to prevent future generations from suffering from genetic diseases, men and women with direct blood relatives and collateral blood relatives within three generations are not allowed to get married. So people must weigh different rights and interests.
Numerous scientific research results and statistical data show that family, as the basic component of human society and the basic unit of interpersonal relationship, is not created by one person or some people casually, but a civilized achievement in the long process of self-exploration and choice in human history. There have been experiments to replace families in history, but the new model has brought disastrous consequences to people, so it has never really succeeded. Parents' family is the most favorable environment for children's physical and mental development, forming a sound personality, mature autonomy and perfect emotional experience of love, thus avoiding psychological barriers of cognition and emotion. On the contrary, children in families who have lost one parent can't feel their parents' complete love, and it is difficult for their personality development to reach a sound level. The probability of mental disorder and misconduct is much higher than that of peers in parents' families. In the real society, it is a great misfortune to hurt children because of their parents' divorce, but these children have at least their parents, and at least they have had a complete two-parent family. However, the reproductive behavior of single men and women through cloning technology not only makes the offspring naturally lose their uniqueness and uniqueness rights, but also deprives them of the right to have parents that their gene donors (that is, single aristocrats) usually enjoy. He was born in a single-parent family without father and mother since he existed. Can this be said to be fair to human cloning? This unfairness, this obvious physical and mental harm to clones, is enough to constitute a powerful reason to deny the reproductive rights of single aristocrats. Imagine, if the single aristocrat insists on choosing cloning technology for reproduction, so that the clones are forced to live in a single-parent family, then according to the principle of fairness, the clones have the right to make another choice in the choice of gene donors when they grow up, that is, to escape from this family and find a more "brand-new" living space. In this way, the desire of single aristocrats to have their own offspring will eventually fail.
Based on the above reasons, reproductive cloning has caused harm and threat to the public interests and group interests of human beings, which is a serious social harm and should be included in the research field of criminology.
Third, thinking about the dual effects of modern science and technology.
Science and technology is a double-edged sword, which will not only benefit mankind, but also harm mankind. Zhuangzi, a philosopher in our country, once mentioned the dual role of science and technology. At that time, farmers worked in the fields by small modernization, that is, irrigating farmland with treadmills or waterwheels. Zhuangzi saw it, and said with great emotion that watering the land with water trucks is to cultivate lazy people and encourage people to cheat and play tricks. Although Zhuangzi's thought has not been recognized by most people, many people have been asking about the negative effects of science for more than two centuries. Nothing is more extensive and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people than the British comedian Chaplin's criticism and satire on the negative effects of science and technology in his comedy Modern Times at the beginning of this century. By imitating a series of exaggerated actions of workers in automobile production lines, he became accustomed to the actions and behaviors brought into life by nature, and skillfully satirized the alienation of automation on people's spiritual world. Regrettably, until today, we have not fully realized the troubles and disasters that science and technology will bring to mankind, thus attracting the necessary attention. The disasters brought by science are usually realized in many ways. For example, we failed to recognize the negative effects of science itself or in a short time, which made people misunderstand science and blindly worship science and technology; Misuse, abuse and intentional use of scientific research itself and achievements, as well as vague guiding ideology behind scientific research and lack of knowledge of distinguishing and using science and technology. It may make science and technology have a negative effect on human beings, thus making science and technology go astray.
Do people's lives need to be deliberately created in a planned way, or should they be born and multiplied naturally in a controlled way according to the laws of nature? Whether any scientific and technological discovery and invention of human beings should be applied and popularized depends on the advantages and disadvantages of human survival and social development. Modern high-tech technology, in particular, is likely to make a big mistake that harms mankind without obtaining enough evidence to show that it is fundamentally effective and beneficial to mankind, and without fully evaluating and predicting its technical and social ethical consequences. The original intention of human cloning is to improve human genes, improve the quality of human life and promote human evolution. What should I do if the health of deformed people or people is damaged due to rough technology? Is this ethical? Making fun of human life is a responsibility that no one can afford!