Cover
story Small step, big fuss
By MARGOT PATTERSON
Last weeks announcement that
scientists at a small biotechnology company in Massachusetts had cloned human
embryos seemed to bring Brave New World one step closer to reality. The
Nov. 25 announcement by Advanced Cell Technology, a privately funded company in
Worcester, Mass., ignited a storm of protest. The Vatican condemned the
experiments unequivocally, as did President George W. Bush and numerous
religious and political leaders at home and abroad.
We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it,
Bush said, who called on lawmakers to enact a ban on cloning human embryos.
Many bioethicists, including some Catholics, are not in favor of a
ban on all human cloning research, but express concern that scientific research
is outpacing public discussion of it.
Advanced Cell Technology was not attempting to create human
beings. Rather, the company was seeking to produce embryos from which stem
cells can be derived for the purpose of treating disease. Its research is
controversial because it involves creating embryos in order to destroy
them.
Nonetheless, many scientists and doctors say that therapeutic
cloning holds tremendous potential for treating diseases, including
Parkinsons disease, Alzheimers disease, diabetes and many others.
Theoretically, the stem cells produced by therapeutic cloning could grow into
almost any cell type and serve as replacement tissue that would be an exact
genetic match for a patient, who would then not require anti-rejection
drugs.
Opponents of therapeutic cloning argue that in addition to the
immorality of discarding human embryos, the technique will pave the way for
reproductive cloning -- the creation of a new human being.
From the point of view of many scientists, Advanced Cell
Technologys claim to success was premature at best. The company was able
to produce human embryos that lived for only a few hours and that grew to six
cells in size. Embryos of about 100 or more cells are needed to harvest stem
cells.
Why the big fuss? said Dr. Rudolf Jaenisch of the
experiments by Advanced Cell Technology published in the online publication,
E-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine. A professor of
biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who works with mouse
embryonic stem cells, Jaenisch called the companys claim of success
ludicrous.
From the scientific point of view, I think its very
underwhelming, Jaenisch said. They couldnt get these embryos
to divide more than once or twice. Its basically a failed
experiment.
Indeed, both the promise and the peril of the experiments Advanced
Cell Technology conducted may be exaggerated by the company and its critics
alike. Still, the outcry over the companys research indicates how
sensitive an issue cloning is, both in this country and abroad.
A nightmare reality
In Germany Research Minister Edelgard Bulmahn said Advanced Cell
Technologys announcement showed the need for a worldwide ban on human
cloning while Joerg-Dietrich Hoppe, the president of the major physicians
association there, termed the U.S. research a nightmare that has now
unfortunately become reality. In Brussels, a senior European Union
official called for an urgent debate on the ethics of human cloning. Not
everything scientifically possible and technologically feasible is necessarily
desirable, said Philippe Busquin, the European research commissioner, in
a statement.
In Rome, Msgr. Tarcisio Bertone, a senior Vatican official, said
the Catholic church was launching an alarm on cloning.
Therapeutic aims are excellent, they are praiseworthy. However, it is the
means used that raise the questions, Bertone told Italian state
television. If it involves production and destruction of human beings to
treat other human beings, the end doesnt justify the means.
In this country, within hours of Bushs denouncing the
research by Advanced Cell Technology, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said he would
press for passage by Christmas of a bill prohibiting human cloning for either
reproductive or therapeutic purposes. A similar bill has already been passed in
the House of Representatives. If the Senate does not quickly pass the bill,
Brownback said he would propose a six-month moratorium on cloning research.
Human cloning is a neuralgic issue -- whether its
issues of 1984 or issues of Frankenstein. Theres clearly an
extraordinary reaction that comes from people when this topic is brought
up, said Jesuit Fr. Kevin Wilde, a bioethicist at Georgetown University,
who said the study by Advanced Cell Technology reflects one
more step in a line of development where medicine is heading.
Le Roy Walters, a philosopher at Georgetown whom the president
consulted before making his decision on embryonic stem cell lines this past
August, described the research by Advanced Cell Technology as a small
step scientifically but a larger step socially and ethically and
legally.
Some bioethicists said that while the furor over Advanced Cell
Technologys announcement will prompt new public attention to cloning,
some of the key issues may get lost in the debate.
Wilde said one set of concerns for some people, and especially for
the Catholic church, includes regard for early life. Another set of issues
turns on broader questions of the relationship between reproduction and
sexuality, with the Vatican taking the stance that reproduction cannot be
separated from the sexual expression of love without undercutting the morality
of the action, whether this involves contraception, in vitro fertilization or
cloning. Yet another area of concern is experimentation itself.
There are a lot of areas where our knowledge base is rather
thin, Wilde said. That is the opinion of the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission, which said we shouldnt proceed with human cloning
because we dont know about its long-term effects.
But for Wilde, what is most troublesome about Advanced Cell
Technologys research is the lack of prior public discussion of it. The
federal government monitors research financed with public funds, but privately
funded research is unregulated.
What Id like to see is good public argument and
discussion, Wilde said of cloning research. If its wrong,
whats wrong with it? If its good, whats good with it? I worry
when people make assertions one way or another without discussion.
Despite enthusiasm for a wholesale ban on human cloning research,
particularly among religious groups, Wilde said he doesnt favor such a
ban. Im afraid that if youre not careful, the research will
just go elsewhere. I believe one way to protect the ethical quality of such
research is to maintain it in a public forum and subject it to public
discussion, he said.
Ronald Cole-Turner agrees that public scrutiny of cloning research
is essential. A professor of theology and ethics at Pittsburgh Theological
Seminary and an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, Cole-Turner
serves on the executive committee of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and
Religion of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the
author of The New Genesis: Theology and the Genetic Revolution and the
editor of Human Cloning: Religious Responses.
On one hand, the difficulty Advanced Cell Technology experienced
with its research should set reproductive cloning back and provide further
much-needed time for reflection on it, Cole-Turner said. On the other hand, the
fact that Advanced Cell Technology succeeded at all is sobering, he said.
I think this step makes it much more likely that human
clones will happen, Cole-Turner said. It increases the likelihood
that it will be done irresponsibly ... in a race for a patent or a race for a
market share.
The United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian church both took
positions last summer favoring stem cell research and, within limits, embryo
research. Cole-Turner supports that position and says he doesnt object to
the kind of research Advanced Cell Technology is doing so much as its headlong
pursuit of it.
They crossed a moral threshold, Cole-Turner said of
Advanced Cell Technologys experiments. Corporations do not have the
right to take humanity across such a threshold.
Cole-Turner called the companys decision to proceed with
human cloning without any prior public discussion offensive, though
he added that in Advanced Cell Technologys defense right now there is no
federal advisory process to help private corporations deliberate what they do
with embryos.
The people in Washington seem only concerned with what
theyre paying for, he said.
Cole-Turner suggested the new bioethics council Bush appointed in
August to advise the president on embryonic stem cell research should be given
federal oversight responsibilities over privately funded research as well as
publicly funded research. Currently, he said, the government is simply
abdicating its responsibility.
A company like Advanced Cell Technology should have to come
before some entity of the federal government to apply for permission to work on
human embryos. It should have to make the case before a federal panel that what
its doing is legitimate science -- that it uses the fewest possible
embryos, that it will tell where the embryos are coming from and whats
done with them at the end of experimentation. Only then would you get a license
for experimentation.
The future of cloning
Had the experiments by Advanced Cell Technology been more
successful, they might have advanced the case for therapeutic cloning, said
Greg Kaebnick at the Hastings Center, an independent, nonpartisan research
institute that examines ethical issues in the area of health, medicine and the
environment. As it is, its unclear how the announcement by Advanced Cell
Technology will influence the public debate of cloning research, said Kaebnick,
the editor of the centers bimonthly Hastings Center Report.
Kaebnick said hes concerned that a useful distinction
between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning may be lost in the clamor
over the Nov. 25 report of human cloning. While strongly opposed to
reproductive cloning, Kaebnick said therapeutic cloning may have many
benefits.
Unfortunately, any ban on human cloning will be much more
enforceable on therapeutic cloning than on reproductive cloning, Kaebnick
said.
The experiments Advanced Cell Technologies conducted to create
human embryos were done in several ways. One method was much like the standard
approach to cloning cows and sheep that was used to clone Dolly, the first
cloned sheep. Genetic material was removed from an unfertilized egg and in its
place an adult cell was inserted. The resulting clone is a genetic copy of the
donor of the adult cell, not the donor of the egg. Using this method, Advanced
Cell Technology experimented with both skin cells and cumulus cells, which are
cells that surround human eggs, and reported better results with cumulus cells.
The company paid women $3,000 to $5,000 for their eggs.
The other method Advanced Cell Technology followed was to
stimulate an egg to divide without being fertilized. The embryos that result
from this process, known as parthenogenesis, cannot develop into babies since
they lack the genes from a male that are needed to form a placenta. The
scientists at Advanced Cell Technology chemically stimulated 22 human eggs.
Most died within a day; six lasted for five days.
If theres anything new about this story today,
its the parthenogenesis part, said Philip Boyle, a religious
ethicist on health care issues at the Park Ridge Center for Health, Faith and
Ethics, a nonprofit, nonsectarian institute that examines the intersection of
health and religion. Boyle said the parthenogenesis aspect of the experiments
presents ethicists some new and unexpected challenges.
Its not the same moral problem as the destruction of
the human embryo, which is a concern of the Catholic church, Boyle said.
If we stop at parthenogenesis, would there be anything wrong in getting
an unfertilized egg to divide?
Boyle said Catholic moral theologians might look at the issue from
several considerations. First, how was the egg obtained? Is it licit? Is the
egg itself a valuable good unfertilized?
In both the debate over embryonic stem cells and, now, cloned
human embryos, Boyle said insufficient attention has been paid to possible
alternatives. For instance, adult tissue, maternal blood and fetuses that have
been miscarried are all possible sources of stem cells.
If the vast majority of people find something morally
repugnant, should researchers be looking for an alternative? They dont
seem so inclined. A lot of the time people who have a lot of vested interests
discount moral risks. I think we ought to have some oversight. Im more
and more concerned about unregulated private science, Boyle said.
Unprepared for ethical questions
Unfortunately, said Boyle, too many religious leaders are
unwilling or unprepared to deal with the ethical issues contemporary science
raises.
Someone needs to exert moral leadership -- to talk about
what values as a society were pursuing, Boyle said.
Cole-Turner added his own concerns about the perils of unregulated
science. The last thing we want is human embryo research as part of a
high school science experiment -- to have embryo research be so trivialized
that literally anybody could do it.
The very limited success made by Advanced Cell Technology in its
experiments shows that Brave New World will not arrive tomorrow. Still,
some ethicists say human cloning, for reproductive purposes as well as
therapeutic purposes, is no longer a far-off possibility but a probability.
I think eventually there may be some cases of reproductive
cloning whether we like it or not, said Kaebnick. By banning it, we
may be able to keep it down to a minimum. I think there are some people who
would desperately love to have a child cloned that theyve lost and would
have the money to do so and could do so if the technology were there.
Right now, only a few countries in the world permit human cloning
research, said Leroy Walters.
I think there should be not only a national law but an
international convention on the question of reproductive cloning that would at
least agree on an international moratorium on attempts to create a human child
by nuclear transfer, Walters said.
Such a moratorium would have the backing of the Vatican. On Nov.
19, Archbishop Rafaele Renato Martino, the Vaticans permanent observer to
the United Nations, said the Vatican supports a proposed international
convention against human cloning.
Margot Patterson is NCR senior writer.
Related Web sites
Advanced Cell Technology
www.advancedcell.com Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion
www.aaas.org/spp/dser The Hastings Center
www.thehastingscenter.org National Bioethics Advisory Commission
bioethics.georgetown.edu/nbac
Ethical concerns about human cloning |
Cloning can be done for the purposes of either replicating
an individual (reproductive cloning) or growing tissue (therapeutic cloning)
for treatment of disease.
Therapeutic cloning:
- Disregard for early life. Through nuclear transfer of
genetic material, human embryos are created that are then destroyed after about
five days.
- Separates reproduction from sexuality.
- Therapeutic cloning technology could be easily applied
to reproductive cloning, which is widely seen as riskier and more questionable.
- Privately funded cloning is not subject to government
regulation.
Reproductive cloning:
- Separates reproduction from sexuality.
- Is at odds with values placed on personhood,
parent-child relationship, family and nature.
- Is an unacceptable form of human experimentation.
- May produce physical harm to children produced through
cloning, as most animals created through cloning have been born with
abnormalities.
- May change or weaken the nature of family and the bonds
between family members.
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National Catholic Reporter, December 7,
2001
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