Reevaluating repugnance: a critical analysis of Leon Kass' writings on genetic reproductive technologies.

Abstract

Recent philosophical and political discourse surrounding the issue of human cloning has dominated both public and academic arenas. With the dual potential to address human disease, distress, and disorder in unprecedented ways, and to offend a vast public uncomfortable with the technology, cloning represents a true political conundrum. Adulterated by the opinion of an uninformed public, the murky waters of public policy-making foster arguments like Leon Kass' "Wisdom of Repugnance." Unfortunately, such appeals to repulsion do not fare as well in the academic arena. Kass proposes that society yield to repugnance as an ethically relevant factor, since the elicitation of such repugnance signifies the defilement of human nature. However, such an application of repulsion and offense to human nature leads to improbable conclusions and internal contradictions that soundly repudiate the acceptance of such a principle. Thus, rather than pre-analytically yielding to visceral emotions and passions, individual rational agents--and the public generally--ought to thoroughly analyze all of the relevant factors surrounding cloning before, and perhaps instead of, rejecting the technology simply because it elicits repugnance.