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Even though stem cells from adult human skin may be just as effective for medical research as those taken from clones according to new research, the pressure to allow cloning continues. Despite the new studies, both Sen. Kennedy and Kerry are expected to be prominently in favor of cloning in the battle that is ensuing since the Worcester company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced on November 24 its preliminary successes in the cloning of human embryos. Kennedy is obviously eager to support the cloning. “I strongly oppose the use of cloning technology to reproduce a human being,” Kennedy said. “But we must also protect essential areas of medical research involving cloning technology, including stem-cell research.” Senator Kerry, who has consistently voted pro-abortion, can be expected to follow suit. The Senate debate on the cloning ban will likely not begin before February or March. On
one side are those who argue that such a ban should only
forbid the cloning of human beings who are allowed to live
(called “reproductive” cloning) while still permitting
cloning for medical research and therapies where the cloned
embryo is allowed to live for only a few days (known as
“therapeutic” cloning). Included
in those who favor cloning for research are those who fear the
enactment of any law which would identify the earliest moment
of conception as the beginning of human life. These include
the powerful biotech lobby and many scientific organizations. On the other side are those who believe that all human embryos are just that – human – and that once on the slippery slope, reproductive cloning will inevitably follow. As the President’s new bioethics advisor, Leon Kass, has said, “Once the embryonic clones are produced in laboratories, the eugenic revolution will have begun, and we will have lost our chance to do anything about it.” Will U.S. Ban All Cloning?Last
July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a ban on both
types of cloning by a 265-162 vote. No one from the
Massachusetts delegation voted for the ban. (Such a ban would
affect all U.S. scientists, not only those receiving federal
money.) President Bush has urged the Senate to act swiftly to
do the same. But quite a few Senators are balking, including
Ted Kennedy. Laurie
Letourneau, President of the Life Action League of
Massachusetts, told MassNews that it is “obscene” that the
entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation supports
experimentation on cloned human embryos. The
state of Massachusetts could also forbid human cloning. Three
bills to do that were given a hearing on December 12 at the
State House (S. 1794, S. 1808, S. 1809). They seek to ban only
reproductive human cloning, but would allow cloning of human
cells, human tissue, or human organs that would not result in
the replication of a full-grown
human being. (Massachusetts Citizens for Life
originally filed one of these bills in 1999-2000.) Letourneau
said of the state legislators, “I don’t think they have
the moral guts to ban cloning.” Dan Avila of the
Massachusetts Catholic Conference told MassNews, “It’s too
early to tell what will happen in Massachusetts.” He is
“banking that the ball game will be played mostly in
Congress.” Bishop Reilly, Jews for Life, Condemn ACT Reacting
to ACT’s announcement, Bishop Daniel P. Reilly of Worcester
has stated: “[N]oble ends cannot justify morally repugnant
means. … Cloning human beings even at the embryonic stage is
rife with other moral dilemmas from many philosophical
viewpoints. It robs people of their gift of individuality; it
reduces reproduction to a manufacturing process devoid of love
or even human interaction; worse still, it treats human life
as a commodity to be owned and traded, bought or sold. It is
the manufacture of a separate class of life for
enslavement.” The
Bishop continued: “Since adult, stem-cell research has shown
equal if not greater promise utilizing morally acceptable
means, the need for therapeutic cloning is still not clear. I
ask that our legislators move swiftly to ban human cloning for
the protection of our Commonwealth and humanity as a whole
and, in so doing, publicly acknowledge this scientific
breakthrough for what it is, an ethical breakdown.” A
powerful voice against human engineering comes from a group
especially sensitive to the dangers of medical experimentation
on humans, Jews for Life. Their founder, Bonnie Chernin Rogoff,
commented to MassNews: “No
matter what reassurances we hear from Dr. Michael D. West of
Advanced Cell Technologies, cloning human babies will
inevitably happen, because scientific discovery is rarely a
means to an end, but rather leads to more experimentation to
satisfy a demand. I
see cloning as a horrific unnatural means to satisfy the human
demand for perfection, and immortality. Cloning embryos to
cure diseases is only the start. “Cloning
will ultimately be used for elective reasons; for example, to
assist infertile couples achieve immortality through
replication, by duplicating the husband’s genetic code in
order to provide a replacement model. A moral line has been crossed. “Secular
humanists have a dual goal: to rid the world of people deemed
inconvenient or unfit, via abortion and assisted suicide, and
then to improve on God’s creation and replace God’s will
with the people’s will.
But not all people are good.
What happens if some evil scientists with bad ideas
decide to use cloning techniques to create a master race?
What happens once a way is found to replace our own
bodies with new models via cloning?
What happens when some experiments go awry?
The implications and risks involved in such experiments
are too horrible to contemplate. “If
the demand for perfection rises in proportion to the ability
for science to provide the ideal, and a strong foundation in
God is absent, the appalling result will be cloning clinics
that will attempt to breed ‘supreme’ beings for profit.”
What ACT Has Done
Dr.
Michael West, CEO of Advanced Cell, has said, “The most
fundamental problem of humanity remains aging.” He claims
his company is just looking for ways to help those suffering
from disease and he has no intention of cloning a complete
human being. The
company is trying to use cloned human embryos to produce stem
cells. Theoretically, the advantage of this over using stem
cells from other sources is that therapeutic tissues can be
grown from a patient’s own cells, thereby avoiding rejection
of the cells by the patient’s immune system. West predicts
it will be at least 10 years before any applications may be
available to the public. However,
this goal may likely be reached, say other researchers,
without recourse to cloning. Adult stem cells are already
showing possibly even greater promise for therapeutic
applications than embryonic stem cells. Robert Bazell, NBC
medical reporter, has said that “until now, researchers
thought that stem cells offer the best hope for rebuilding
damaged organs, but [the] latest research shows that the
embryos, which are politically controversial, may not be
necessary.” Leon
Kass labels the whole excursion into “therapeutic” cloning
“science fiction.” ACT
has charted its course, however. There seems to be a
breathlessness to the stories of ACT’s production of several
embryos, which grew only to the four-cell size and in one case
six cells, before they stopped growing. (The embryo needs to
grow to about a hundred cells before stem cells can be
harvested.) It appears the company is trying to get as much
out into the public eye as possible before legislative bodies
have time to absorb it all, and possibly halt their work. The
latest research is detailed in a US News & World Report
cover story (December 3, 2001), which makes heroes of ACT
scientists in a fawning account of their all-nighters at the
lab. West, Cibelli, and Lanza have summarized their embryonic
cloning work in a Scientific American story (11/24/01), and
have published their results in a scientific journal as well. Will ACT Leave USA?
On
November 25, West appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, with Tim
Russert and NBC’s Bazell. It is not clear whether ACT would
leave the country if a total ban on cloning is passed by the
Congress and signed by the President. West seems to waffle in
his answer: “Russert:
If this bill is … passed by the Senate, signed into law by
President Bush, you’d be fined $1 million and up to 10 years
in prison. West:
That’s right. Russert:
Are you prepared for that? West:
Well, we wouldn’t do it in that case. Russert:
You would stop your research? West:
Well, we wouldn’t break the law, of course. It’d be a
tragic day in the history of medicine. ... Russert:
Would you take your research overseas if it was banned in the
United States? West:
I don’t know the answer to that. I’m optimistic that
we’re the leading technological country in the world, and I
think in some respects, the moral leader in the world. ...
I believe the technique has a great deal of merit and
will be allowed to move forward.” Does
ACT Plan to Clone a Human Baby? ACT
may indeed be thinking of cloning a human baby, implanting a
cloned embryo in a woman, in the near future. Bazell asked
West why ACT released its report on the 80% healthy rate of
their cloned cows, just one week before their human embryo
cloning announcement. (The
reliability of the cow report has been contested by Professor
Rudolf Jaenisch of MIT’s Whitehead Institute. Jaenisch also
worried that people interested in cloning humans would use the
study to defend their work as “safe,” according to a
Reuters story.) The
interview on Meet the Press continued: Bazell:
So if you’re not going down the track toward cloning human
beings, how come you’re making such a big deal about the
cows being healthy? West:
Well, we’re trying to be accurate…. Russert:
[In Scientific American], in an article written by you and
your colleagues, you say this. “We believe that reproductive
cloning has potential risk to both mother and fetus that make
it unwarranted at this time and we support a restriction on
cloning for reproductive purposes until the safety and ethical
issues surrounding it are resolved.” West:
Right. Russert:
[You say], “At this time, until safety and ethical issues
are resolved.” You do not have any moral reservations to
cloning. You just want to delay it until you’re more
comfortable with it? West:
Well, this article is us speaking as individuals and
scientists. I’m not an expert in ethics. Follow the Money
ACT
is a privately owned company. But in October its website
announced that the company had received a grant from the
federal government’s National Institute of Standards and
Technology for $1,890,000. The funds are to support research
into “transdifferentiation,” which “focuses on
developing specialized adult cell types of the central nervous
system,” without using “animal or human oocytes, embryos
or embryonic stem cells.” The
Los Angeles Times reported. “[A government official] said
the terms of the grant specifically forbid the company from
using the federal money to conduct research on human cloning.
‘We have audit procedures in place to make sure that
doesn’t happen.’” The
article also mentions the media blitz accompanying the recent
cloning announcement, and states that some in the scientific
community are speculating “as to whether the company hopes
to use the publicity to attract investors.” The
Boston Globe reported that the University of Massachusetts
stands to gain from future ACT profits. Specifically, UMass.
will receive 4.5% of the company’s net sales according to a
1998 licensing deal. President Bulger’s spokesman told the
Globe, “It’s an area fraught with legal, ethical, and
moral considerations. ... I haven’t heard anyone suggest the
University will somehow be held culpable for this.” Duncan
Holly Biomedical of Somerville helped collect human eggs for
ACT’s experiments. Seven Boston-area women were donors,
earning about $4,000 apiece (or about $40/hour). For
a little black humor, Forbes magazine (6/29/01) ran a story
entitled, “We cloned you, now, here’s the bill.”
According to their fictional tally, a cloned human baby will
run around $1.7 million. “We assumed that this cloning
effort would be clandestine, because it appears cloning will
be illegal in many countries.” Atty.
Susan Gay, director of the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund of
Massachusetts, and executive vice-president of Massachusetts
Citizens for Life, sees the almighty dollar as prime motivator
at ACT. She told MassNews: “The
ends touted by biotech firms are grossly speculative in the
first instance, and, if attainable at all, will be achieved by
a means which is indefensible. ... Our nation has historically
sought to protect the weak and the defenseless from
exploitation whether by unbridled capitalists or by the
intelligentsia. Our biotech industries represent both, and are
seeking carte blanche for their boundless venture into the
uncharted realm of asexual human generation. ... It will fall
to our legislature in this next year to muster the courage to
‘just say no’ to those who would stop at nothing unless a
serious governmental sanction looms larger than the dollar
signs on the horizon.” ACT’s Board of Ethical Advisors
Three
Massachusetts women were named in the Scientific American
article as members of ACT’s ethical advisory board: Judith
Bernstein of Boston University; Susan Crockin, a health care
lawyer in private practice in Newton; and Susan R. Levin, a
counselor in private practice in West Roxbury. Professor
Ronald M. Green, director of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth
College, is chairman. The Slippery Slope
The
birth control pill was developed in Worcester. Now, the first
known cloning of human embryos has happened there. Letourneau
said she feels like she’s living at the “ground zero”
source of some of the most damaging scientific work ever done.
While West may ridicule the slippery slope theory, many
residents of that city are wondering just what’s been oiling
their hills. Not
only Catholics, but many people concerned with the protection
of human dignity, are seeing the wisdom in the warning about
where such medical “advances” would eventually lead us. West
has tried to demean the opponents of embryonic cloning
research as hopelessly old-fashioned. He told Meet the Press,
“You know, when IVF [in-vitro fertilization] was first being
discussed, the same opponents, by the way, of this application
of cloning and medicine, were against IVF. And they said,
‘Test tube babies, brave new world,’ and we’re hearing
the same individuals and the same words against the medical
uses of cloning technology.” The
Catholic Church still opposes IVF, though perhaps more quietly
now (out of consideration for the many IVF children and
families?). The Church’s belief that the birth control pill
and IVF were at the top of a slippery slope they believe was
prescient. Scientists are now indeed engineering babies,
“creating” life, performing “near miraculous” feats,
to use West’s words. Once
cloned children are among us, will opposition to the procedure
become more muted – out of consideration for the cloned and
their families? Pope
John Paul II urged President Bush last July to bar medical
experimentation using human embryos. The Pope said:
“Experience is already showing how a tragic coarsening of
consciences accompanies the assault on innocent human life in
the womb, leading to accommodation and acquiescence in the
face of other related evils, such as euthanasia, infanticide,
and most recently, proposals for the creation for research
purposes of human embryos, destined to destruction in the
process.” Polls
show a large majority of Americans oppose reproductive
cloning. But they apparently have also accepted West’s
distinction that there are two kinds of cloning, and they
favor “therapeutic” cloning by a slight majority. Scientists
hold great public trust in our secular age. But many Americans
would still agree with Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey: “Mad
scientists are still mad scientists no matter how white their
lab coats are and how many bioethicists they hire to justify
their actions.” An extensive story on cloning by Amy Contrada
can be found in the September 2001 issue in the MassNews archives.
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