Director : Dr Donald Bruce
The Implications of Cloning for the Welfare of Farmed Livestock
Press Release, 15 December 1998,
Welfare and Cloning
Amid all the hype and speculations about cloned humans, and the
recent controversial proposals to allow cloned human embryos for
cell replacement, the ethical questions of animal cloning -
which already exists - have been largely been ignored. The
Church of Scotland's SRT Project has drawn attention to this
since the first cloned sheep, Megan and Morag in 1996. The Farm
Animal Welfare Council Report on Cloning is therefore welcomed,
in addressing some of these questions, and for its cautious view
of the potential uses of cloning in animals. SRT welcomes the
moratorium on nuclear transfer cloning in commercial agriculture
while further investigation is made of animal welfare problems -
such as oversized offspring, perinatal and birth problems and
the question of aged DNA. With such novel technology precaution
is undoubtedly called for. It also supports the call for
regulations to protect cloned farmed livestock and for a
National Standing Committee to oversee the development of
cloning technology. This concurs with the conclusion our recent
book Engineering Genesis, calling for a standing commission on
the ethics of non-human biotechnology.
How Far Should we Go with Animal Cloning?
While the report recognises "considerable public disquiet over
the use of cloned animals in commercial agricultural practice",
it is significantly lacking in making no discussion of what
would and would not constitute right ethical uses of the
technology. In 1997, the Church of Scotland General Assembly
took the view that to reduce the variety and diversity of God's
creation to a narrow genetic blueprint by cloning farm animals
was questionable. Where God evolves a system of boundless
possibilities which works by diversification, what justifies
humans in selecting out certain functions we think are the best,
and replicating them? It therefore opposed the application of
animal cloning as a routine procedure in meat and milk
production. Commercial convenience is an insufficient
justification for this intervention - a step too far in
commodifying animals. But the Kirk supported animal cloning in
the limited context of the production of proteins of therapeutic
value in the milk of genetically modified farm animals, and
similar applications, where natural methods would not work, and
where cloning as such is not the primary intention.
Mixing Animals - An Ethical Problem
The SRT Project disagrees with the report's conclusion that "no
aspect of cloning by nuclear transfer was intrinsically
objectionable." There are deep intrinsic objections to the
mixing of cell nuclei and cytoplasm between widely different
species, as in the USA where cow cells have been given the
nuclei of sheep, pigs and monkeys. This represents a violation
at a very fundamental level of the integrity of the animal, in a
sense far beyond genetic engineering practices where only one or
two genes are changed. The report says that would need to be
"appropriately justified". In our view there is no such
justification for such an intervention, regardless of whether
the embryo was viable or not. The same objection applies even
more strongly to the mixing of human nuclei in cow cells, which
are not discussed in this report but which were recently
announced in the USA.
Humans and Animals - An Ethical Distinction
In an otherwise generally balanced and well argued report, the
SRT Project finds very serious disquiet at the report's
conclusion "It is not clear that a radical distinction between
human and non-human is now defensible, either biologically and
ethically." While asserting the notion that animals, as God's
creatures, have intrinsic worth, and have capacities more
similar to humans than we had perhaps realised, to remove the
ethical distinction would not be accepted by many leading
ethical authorities, both within and outwith the churches.
Indeed, cloning itself provides one of the clearest examples,
where, within a week, two parallel reports draw a radical
distinction between humans and animals. To clone humans,
according to many ethical authorities and the HFEA/HGAC report
on human cloning would be an unacceptable, instrumental use of
fellow humans or an inadmissible act of control. Corresponding
animal cloning are not necessarily unacceptable, according to
the FAWC report, because we accept a measure of instrumental use
and control of animals. Here is a clear distiction which needs
to be protected. There is a need to accord much more respect to
animals, but the trouble with removing the view of animals as
ethically radically different from humans is that we run the
risk of beginning to treat certain classes of humans like
animals.
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This page has been produced by the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland (SRT for short), 8 December 1998. It is copyright, © Donald M.Bruce, 1998. We're usually happy for people to reproduce all or part of our articles, but please write or email us for permission first, at our address below.
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This page has been produced by the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland. For more about our work on other issues, see our Other SRT Project pages, our SRT Publications List, or our On-line SRT Newsletter.
We'd also welcome any comments you may have. We don't claim to have said the last word!
If you want to send us a comment or obtain further information or receive our latest Newsletter,
email us at :
mailto:srtp@srtp.org.uk
or send an ordinary letter or fax to :
Dr.Donald M.Bruce,
Society, Religion and Technology Project,
, 121 George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 4YN, Scotland.
tel. +44 (0)131-240 2250, fax +44 (0)131-240 2239,
email address : srtp@srtp.org.uk
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