Special
Section: Human Destiny Many oppose human cloning
By PAMELA SCHAEFFER
Ninety-six identical twins
working ninety-six identical machines! The voice was almost tremulous
with enthusiasm. You really know where you are. For the first time in
history. He quoted the planetary motto. Community, Identity,
Stability. Grand words. If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the
whole problem would be solved. Solved by standard Gammas,
unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle
of mass production at last applied to biology. --Aldous Huxley, Brave New
World
Cloning humans hasnt happened yet, but the idea of it is in
the air. Most scientists and ethicists agree that its just a matter of
time.
Lee M. Silver, biologist at Princeton University and author of
Remaking Eden, predicts that the first cloned human will quietly make its way
into the population, sneaking in when no one is looking.
Those who want to clone themselves or their children will
not be impeded by governmental laws or regulations, he wrote. The
marketplace -- not government or society -- will control cloning. And if
cloning is banned in one place, it will be made available somewhere
else.
Silver develops the following scenario: A decisive career woman
named Jennifer decides at age 35 that something is missing from her life. That
something is a child. She has no desire to marry, nor does she want to
introduce other genetic material and its possible risks into the fertilization
process. Although cloning is illegal in the United States, she travels to a
Caribbean island where it is not.
The clinic harvests a dozen of Jennifers unfertilized eggs,
removes the nuclei, and fuses them with donor cells taken from inside her
mouth. Two embryos are transferred to her womb.
Back in New York, Jennifer learns that one of the embryos has
implanted. At term, Jennifer gives birth to Rachel, a child who is genetically
her twin sister. Jennifer tells no one, including the gynecologist who delivers
Rachel, that Rachel is a clone. She does tell Rachel later, after she is grown,
but like children born of in vitro fertilization, the news is not unsettling to
her. Like the mother who provided Rachel with genes and maternal influence,
Rachel is a confident person with a well-developed sense of herself.
There are a couple of ways to produce human clones. One is simply
forced twinning: to divide an early embryo, producing two genetically identical
human beings where there otherwise would have been one. Generally, though, when
scientists and ethicists speak of cloning humans, they are talking about the
asexual process that produced Dolly: replicating a human being (asexually) by
stripping an unfertilized egg of its nucleus, thus removing its genetic
material, and fusing it with an adult human cell.
One of the major technical advances in the cloning of Dolly, the
famous sheep born in Scotland in 1997, was getting an adult cell, which had
followed biological instructions to perform a specific adult role, to
despecialize and perform as a totipotent embryonic cell. A totipotent cell is
one that is capable of producing a full human being.
Many non-scientists assume that cloning humans will be too
difficult and risky a process to attempt on humans. But Silver challenges the
muddled thinking behind such arguments. Despite early hurdles,
experimentation with cloning is moving ahead.
In early October, for instance, a dozen cloned Holsteins were
introduced at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wis. The reaction was curiosity
more than shock. We just wanted people to realize that [cloning] was
moving very rapidly from science to a commercial technology, Michael
Bishop, vice president of research for De Forest biotechnology company, told a
reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. We want to show that [the
calves] are normal, healthy and growing, and theres nothing to be afraid
of.
Korean researchers halt work
Nearly a year ago, in mid-December, a team of South Korean
researchers claimed, without producing scientific evidence, to have created a
human embryo by cloning, using a donor cell from a 30-year-old woman. In
compliance with a national ban on research with embryos that are more fully
developed, the Korean researchers said they had halted their experiment after
the embryo divided twice, into a total of four cells. Apart from implications
for human reproduction, the cloning of Dolly represented a breakthrough that
will play a key role in revolutionizing medicine. The ability to make an adult
cell perform like an embryonic cell is a boon, for instance, for stem cell
research. Biologists are working to get stem cells from adult human bodies to
de-specialize so that they can produce tissues useful in healing various parts
of the body.
Generally, though, cloning is thought of less in terms of what
good might come of the process and more in terms of what Catholic theologian
Thomas A. Shannon describes as ethics hysteria.
Among the nightmarish possibilities that have been suggested, Leon
Kass of the American Enterprise Institute said in Ethics of Human Cloning that
celebrities could market their DNA for clones just as they now market
autographs. Theoretically, too, since it takes only one cell to start the
process, someone, perhaps a celebrity, could be cloned without her consent.
Cloning, more than any other scientific procedure in
biotechnology, raises the specter of Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. Some
scientists, ethicists and theologians, though, willing to entertain
clonings potential, if limited, usefulness, suggest that it might serve
to produce children for infertile couples or for couples who wanted to replace
a lost child with her genetic twin. Cloning a person might, theoretically, also
provide a compatible source of bone marrow or organs to help a sick sibling.
Cloning could also serve to allow gay or lesbian couples to reproduce. In the
case of lesbians particularly, couples could reproduce using a donor cell from
one woman and an egg from the other.
Late last year, a British government advisory board said cloning
human cells should be legal where the goal is providing medical treatment for
other people.
But just because human beings can be cloned, should they be? Even
if some good arguments could be developed for giving it a role in human
reproduction, are the benefits worth the risks? Many theologians, ethicists and
religious leaders, though certainly not all, oppose cloning humans. Some are
concerned about potential effects on the family. Some worry about the potential
for making commodities of children; others are concerned about creating
children to fill predetermined roles, such as a gifted athlete or scholar,
based on talents of the cell donor.
Many scientists and ethicists caution, too, against genetic
determinism, pointing out that environmental factors play a critical role
in shaping human development. Michael Jordans clone, lacking the same
drive and training, might not be a basketball star.
The Vatican opposes cloning humans, in part, because it is a means
of reproduction that, like in vitro fertilization, does not derive directly
from sexual intercourse between a married man and woman. In fact, more than any
other reproductive technology, cloning threatens to sever the link between sex,
marriage and reproduction, and to render the male role in reproduction
obsolete.
Lisa Sowle Cahill, a Catholic theologian from Boston College, told
a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, My feminist instincts are at
one level attracted to this possibility. But the bottom line is that I am far
from sure that [rendering] men unnecessary to the procreative process world
work to the ultimate advantage of women. I am pretty sure it would not work to
the advantage of human responsibility for the next generation. Cahill
told NCR that she favors a permanent ban on human cloning.
The Pontifical Academy for Life, in a document titled
Reflections on Cloning, said that human cloning risks being
the tragic parody of Gods omnipotence. The document was released
last year.
Human cloning belongs to the eugenics project and is thus
subject to all the ethical and juridical observations that have amply condemned
it. ... The human cloning project represents the terrible
aberration to which value-free science is driven and is a sign of the profound
malaise of our civilization, which looks to science, technology and the
quality of life as surrogates for the meaning of life and its
salvation.
Pope John Paul II strongly condemned human cloning in a message
delivered Feb. 7, Italys pro-life day. He strongly supported a statement
condemning human cloning as a method of human reproduction, saying that cloning
represented an attack on biological individuality of the human person.
Money is the issue
The pope, in his Feb. 7 statement, also warned that the practice
could be exploited economically.
That point is often overlooked by opponents of cloning, according
to Gregory Pence, who teaches bioethics in the medical school at the University
of Alabama in Birmingham. Looking back, everyone missed the real issue,
which concerned money and the potential it causes for deception, fraud and
greed, he wrote in an article for Knight-Ridder last July.
What we can predict for the future is that the money issues
will be more important than the emotional ones.
To opponents of abortion, though, including Catholic leaders,
perhaps the worst possible outcome of human cloning would be the creation of
human embryos for research -- a distinct scientific possibility that has been
promoted by scientists and even some ethicists in connection with stem cell
research.
The National Bioethics Advisory Commission, composed of an equal
number of scientists and 50 non-scientists, proposed in 1997 that the
government, while refusing to fund human cloning, would permit privately funded
laboratories to conduct experiments with cloned embryos as long as they were
not implanted in womens wombs. The commission proposed a five-year
moratorium on use of cloning to produce a child.
David M. Byers, director of U.S. Catholic bishops committee
on science and human values, described that rationale as based on a
create and kill mentality that will cheapen societys
respect for life even further.
Byers, writing in Religious Responses to Human Cloning, said the
report suggests that clones are fine as long as they are not implanted.
How great a step is it then to say: Clones are fine, why not implant
them?
In fact, Silver thinks just such an attitude could well be the
outcome of genetic profiling of embryos. He imagines a scenario such as this:
Fertility clinics, using technology not yet developed, will someday be able to
extract many more eggs from a womans body than is currently possible, he
said in Remaking Eden. The eggs will be fertilized in vitro. Then the parents
will select from the resulting embryos the one that has the genetic profile
they like best. That embryo will be transferred to the womb -- but because
transferred embryos often fail to implant and result in a successful pregnancy,
the embryo will first be cloned. If implantation fails with the first embryo,
or even the second, third or fourth, its clones will be standing by to take a
turn.
The prospect of cloning humans has raised philosophical issues,
questions about the nature of the human person. Some people have wondered, for
instance, whether a cloned human being would have a soul, a concern that most
theologians dismiss out of hand. If there were any doubt about that, they point
out, the question should have been raised long ago, in cases of identical
twins. A cloned human being, after all, would be nothing more genetically than
a delayed twin.
Some theologians are, though, pondering more seriously whether DNA
should be considered sacred. If a single cell can produce a human being, should
it then have sacred rights?
Questions like that make some scientists nervous. Harold E.
Varmus, director of the National Institutes for Health, has asked, If we
say any cell has the potential to be a human being, then every time you cut
your finger, do you have to wear black?
Catholic leaders are not surprised to find their concerns
dismissed. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops Secretariat for
Pro-Life Activities warns that in the future, as pressure to experiment with
cloning grows, cloning advocates and abortion advocates will join forces
and complain that abortion politics is interfering with
scientific research.
Perhaps the most critical challenge for religious leaders in the
years ahead, as the public debate over human cloning grows, is to keep abreast
of scientific advances and to carefully evaluate the theological, moral and
legal stakes.
In a recent article, Courtney S. Campbell, associate professor of
philosophy at Oregon State University, urged religious leaders to develop
positions that assess the religious ramifications of specific scientific
proposals, making sure that their public statements are based in solid
scientific research and information.
Campbells article analyzing the role of religion in
scientific debates in relation to human cloning appeared in the September issue
of Second Opinion, a publication of the Park Ridge Center for the Study of
Health, Faith and Ethics, based in Chicago.
Noting that religious voices are often interpreted as a
problem rather than as a contributor to public policy, Campbell
stressed the importance of building credibility.
Religious positions should be informed and literate about
the scientific research under consideration, whether it be human cloning, or
more recently, embryonic stem cell research, he said. A lack of
scientific sensitivity inevitably undermines the credibility of a
religious-based interpretation, he said. A religious position that is
predictably negative or glibly positive will not do justice either to the
specific public policy question or to its own religious tradition.
James J. Walter, who holds the Austin and Ann OMalley chair
in bioethics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, holds a similar view.
Religious leaders and believers, when confronted with scientific developments
that are ambiguous morally and theologically, should be
careful but not wary, hopeful but not wide-eyed, he said,
assessing developments as they come forward.
The problem is, they are coming so quickly that we
cant sort through them that fast, he said.
National Catholic Reporter, October 22,
1999
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