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By Root 465 0

the outcome. First, we might say that one and the same child, Luke, benefits from the procedure by having two arms rather than one, so the treatment is not inherently bad. (I assume that having both arms is a lot better than having just one.) But if we intuitively tie identity to genetics, and given that the genetic difference is significant, a better description is that the two-armed Luke is not the same child as the one-armed would have been. You cannot harm a non-existent child, and the existing one—Luke—is certainly not harmed by the treatment, so the genetic manipulation is not inherently bad.

Now consider the opposite sort of treatment. It clearly harms a normal child to surgically remove its arm, presumably even in the world of Star Wars with its impressive prosthetics. But suppose the “treatment” had been to alter the genetics of the egg prior to conception, resulting in an armless child, when otherwise a normal child—Luke—would have resulted. Given that genetics is essential to identity, as long as the armless child’s life is on balance worth living, it cannot be said that that child has been harmed by the procedure, since without the procedure it wouldn’t have existed at all. This is not to claim that it isn’t wrong. But if the procedure is wrong, it’s not because some child is a victim of it. Such cases can be puzzling, and it’s not clear exactly what form the cost-benefit analysis ought to take, but the fact that they involve genetic manipulation settles nothing.

Note the application of this line of reasoning to the production of the clone army. Grant me for the sake of the argument that more autonomy is a lot better than less. Then if the genetic manipulation occurs early enough, it will be reasonable to maintain that no clone is harmed by the process—not the diminished one, and not the “normal” one that would have resulted in the absence of manipulation—as long as the diminished clone’s life is on balance worthwhile.

I’m inclined to grant that such a life can be worthwhile. First, there are human beings with diminished autonomy who still have happy lives. And second, any worries about the life of a clone soldier being not worth living have more to do with their being soldiers than with their being clones. If it’s bad to bring cloned soldiers into existence because they will have miserable lives, they arguably are victims whether or not there is genetic manipulation. And if it does not harm the clones, it still may be wrong on other grounds, but the fact that the procedure involves genetic manipulation settles nothing.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

There’s an alternative to genetic manipulation that has nothing especially to do with cloning: environmental engineering of the clones as they develop. “Hot-housed,” the Fett clones develop at a faster rate biologically, and are indoctrinated with intensive military training. Is such environmental manipulation inherently bad? It clearly can have victims, but also can have beneficiaries, since in many cases environmental engineering (education, for instance) improves the lives of those educated.

Two possible features of environmental manipulation are of particular moral concern: deception and coercion, bending another person’s will to your own ends by threats. Some popular ethical theories hold that deception and coercion are inherently bad, and so manipulation involving one or both is inherently bad. According to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, for instance, deception and coercion are wrong because it is always wrong to treat another person merely as a means to your ends.

Take brainwashing. This is likely involves both deception and coercion, and so is a candidate for inherently bad environmental manipulation. One of the objectionable things about some forms of terrorism is that suicidal terrorists seem to have been brainwashed into unreasonable actions. But even here, we should not jump to the conclusion that manipulating a person’s will by coercion or deception is always wrong. When Obi-Wan uses his Jedi powers on the “death-stick” dealer in