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From IVF to artificial wombs, why does each advance in reproductive technology still conjure up visions of monsters or Hitler clones?

WHEN Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the Vatican spokesman for bioethics, objected to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards receiving the 2010 Nobel prize for medicine, he stressed that he was speaking in a personal capacity.

But opposition to assisted conception is official papal policy. In 2004, Pope John Paul II condemned IVF as 鈥渁 technology that wants to substitute true paternity and maternity and therefore that does harm to the dignity of parents and children alike鈥�. The 鈥渃onjugal act鈥�, he said, 鈥渃annot be substituted by a mere technological procedure which is devoid of human value and subject to the dictates of science and technology鈥�.

Now that more than 4 million babies globally have been conceived by IVF, this view seems seriously out of kilter with the world as most of us know it. Yet every fresh advance in technologies of 鈥渉uman manufacture鈥�, from artificial wombs to sperm made from stem cells, elicits the same negative imagery as IVF initially did: references to Frankenstein, to Brave New World and the Faust legend, visions of resurrecting Adolf Hitler (or armies of Hitlers), and portrayals of the 鈥渁rtificial human鈥� as a soulless creature that will ultimately supplant us.

The reaction of many scientists is to lament these 鈥渟cience fiction鈥� stories, to imagine that if Mary Shelley and Aldous Huxley had never committed their imaginings to paper all would have been well. They fail to see that neither Shelley nor Huxley exactly invented their stories, because myths and legends of making people have always been with us, and have always spoken to deep-rooted fears and preconceptions about what this might entail 鈥� and what it would produce.

Some versions of the Prometheus story of Greek mythology say that he not only gave technological knowledge to humankind but actually created human beings. And the legendary inventor Daedalus was said to have been able to animate statues. Ancient Jewish folklore tells of the golem, a being animated from clay by magical means, while medieval alchemists were said to be able to make homunculi, little human-like forms cooked up in a sealed vessel, as later portrayed in Goethe鈥檚 telling of the Faust legend.

Crucially, all these examples of people-making 鈥� what I call anthropoeia 鈥� ended badly. The message was that this sort of dabbling in the work of the divine was apt to bring down speedy retribution, whether it was Prometheus suffering perpetual torment in chains, the golem-makers crushed by their wayward creatures, or Faust dragged to hell. The 鈥渕anufactured being鈥� itself was either subhuman, like the golem, or superhuman, like Goethe鈥檚 homunculus 鈥� but could never be just like us. Most significantly, it lacked a soul, the watermark of true humanity that only God could instil.

Mary Shelley combined some of these mythical elements with the electrical 鈥済alvanic鈥� theory of physiology popular in the early 19th century, and in doing so she created a secular vision of anthropoeia in her Gothic novel. God is relegated to the wings, and it is left for the monster to deliver retribution on Victor Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus. Theatre and film insisted on their own versions, in particular refusing to grant the creature any eloquence: it was a pitiful, shambling mute in stage adaptations in London鈥檚 West End long before Boris Karloff stumbled across the screen.

In the 20th century, anthropoeia left the secluded lab and entered the factory, first in Karel Capek鈥檚 1921 play R.U.R. in which the original robots were made of flesh and blood, from components assembled like Henry Ford鈥檚 automobiles.

Just a decade or so later, Aldous Huxley imagined a better way. The hatcheries of his Brave New World were extrapolated from early experiments on tissue culture and the vision of babies gestated in artificial wombs (ectogenesis) advocated by his brother, the biologist Julian, and their friend J. B. S. Haldane. The mass-produced people designed to fill castes were the forerunners of the clone armies of Star Wars.

From these stories, we have accumulated a roster of myths about reproductive technologies that now recur with dreary predictability with every new advance. Anthropoeia will be used for social engineering by dictators 鈥� or indeed to duplicate themselves; it will lead to the demise of the family; it will result in the annihilation of men (or women). We still find it hard to imagine that the clone 鈥� a term philosopher Gregory Pence considers as prejudicial as labels of racism 鈥� will, when born, be a person just like us.

These fears make little sense in themselves; some invoke more or less magical thinking. But their pull is relentless. Why do we insist that this 鈥渙therness鈥� and this intervention in procreation are only steps towards a Brave New World? Partly, I think, it is a defence against the uncomfortable notion that we can be 鈥渕anufactured鈥�. But at root, making people (or merely appearing to do so, as in IVF and reproductive cloning) is arguably the ultimate 鈥渦nnatural鈥� act.

And what we generally fail to realise is that, when we call something unnatural, we are not just placing it in a different category from the 鈥渘atural鈥�. We are making a moral judgement 鈥� indeed, the same moral judgement Pope John Paul II was making about IVF. We are saying that it violates a perceived 鈥渘atural order鈥�, which in theological terms is associated with a purpose for all things designated by God, and which must therefore be intrinsically 鈥済ood鈥�. According to this view, the natural 鈥減urpose鈥� of sexual intercourse is procreation, and so a new human life cannot morally begin without it. Today鈥檚 accusations of unnaturalness, and even of playing God, are likely to come from a secular perspective that has merely replaced God with a reified nature.

The preconceptions and prejudices, derived from the cultural history of anthropoeia, that now surround reproductive technologies are still shaping the discourse. This was all too evident in the debates about human cloning and embryo research conducted by George W. Bush鈥檚 Council on Bioethics, which supported the administration鈥檚 decision to block federal funds for stem-cell research.

At a meeting in 2002, one member, Charles Krauthammer, claimed that cloning would enable 鈥渟ome people鈥� to 鈥渕anufacture extremely intelligent, extremely powerful, extremely resistant people鈥� 鈥� nothing less, he said, than a 鈥渟uper-race鈥�. The council鈥檚 chair, bioethicist Leon Kass, had warned back in 1971 that new reproductive technologies might lead to the 鈥渁sexual reproduction of 10,000 Mao Tse-tungs鈥�, and he has used mythical images to oppose such technologies every step of the way.

Kass feels that our instinctive aversion to some of these developments 鈥渋s the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason鈥檚 power fully to articulate it鈥� 鈥� something he calls the 鈥渨isdom of repugnance鈥�. This notion should not be dismissed out of hand: for example, rational arguments for why it is not immoral to create headless, cloned embryos for spare parts surely can鈥檛 be the sole arbiter of whether that is a good idea. Our instinctive unease about making babies by human cloning cannot be ruled out in grappling with that possibility.

So how will we know when to heed repugnance and when not? There is no simple moral calculus. I believe the first question for new reproductive technologies should not be whether it is 鈥渞ight鈥� in some timeless, absolute moral sense, but why we might want to do it. Not until we examine and acknowledge the roles that people-making myths, both ancient and modern, play in shaping our fears about these techniques can we have a grown-up debate about whether we want them.