SHOULD WE CLONE HUMANS?

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Society, Religion and Technology Project

Church of Scotland

Looking at the ethics of technology for a New Millennium

Director : Dr Donald Bruce

SHOULD WE CLONE HUMANS?

Revised Version, 19 November 1998

1. Human Cloning - will it ever happen?
2. Why Cloning Humans is Ethically Unacceptable
3. Non-Reproductive Cloning?
4. What do you do with a Genie out of the Bottle?
- The Need for a Worldwide Ban on Cloning Human Beings

Further Information
SRT's Other Cloning Pages
Other SRT Pages

1. Human Cloning - will it ever happen?

One of the abiding SciFi nightmares has been the idea that we could one day replicate human beings asexually, just by copying material from human cells. This was one of the most chilling features of Huxley's Brave New World. More measured scientific assessments have generally regarded this as something pretty remote. And many in the churhces and elsewhere hoped it would stay that way. Roslin's scientists have told a Select Comittee of the House of Commons that the nuclear transfer technique they have applied to produce Dolly could be in theory applied to humans. Whether anyone would try and whether it would work is another matter. But the "what if" question must now be asked with much more seriousness than would have ever been justified before.

Two aspects of the Roslin discovery have set the world of biotechnology alight. One is the fact that an somatic tissue from an adult has been used to produce a live animal. This has rewritten one of the laws of biology. Up to now it had been assumed that once animal cells go through the mysterious process of differentiation, and become a particular type of cell, they cannot go back to being undifferentiated. Now Dr Wilmut's work has caused a set of cells to forget what they are and start all over again, as if they were undifferentiatied. The second is that you can clone a large mammal from the cells of an adult of the species. It is this second aspect that has caught the public imagination, because it has dramatically brought forward the question of whether it could be possible to realising the SciFi dreams of cloned humans.

Faced with such a fertile prospect, the human imagination runs riot, and the media have come up with some very bizarre ideas. One article claimed that we might clone humans to select out genetic defects or select for desirable traits. This would be impossible just by cloning. It might in theory be done by germline gene therapy, but that is quite another, and highly controversial, story. The announcements that nuclear transfer cloning is possible not only in sheep but cattle and mice suggests that the technique could be quite general in mammals, and thus potentially more likely in humans than when it had been done only on a single sheep.

Scientifically this would be a big and highly dangerous leap to go from a cloning a sheep to cloning humans, and it is premature to discuss this as if it were inevitably going to happen. But this discovery means that we have at least got to ask the question, "What if?".

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2. Why Cloning Humans is Ethically Unacceptable

Dr Wilmut, the scientist involved, and his colleagues at Roslin have made it quite clear that they think that to clone humans would be unethical. The Human Fretilisation and Embryology Authroity agrees with the general public impression that to clone human beings would be ethically unacceptable as a matter of principle. I and most people in the Church of Scotland would certainly agree that on principle, to replicate any human technologically is something which goes against the basic dignity of the uniqueness of each human being in God's sight. Christians would see this as a violation of the uniqueness of a human life, which God has given to each of us and to no one else. In what sesne do we mean this?

Some say that that the existence of "identical" twins means that we should have no ethical difficulty over cloning, or that to object to cloning implies that twins are abnormal. This argument does not hold. Biologically, identical human twins are not the norm, but the unusual manner of their creation does not make them any less human. We recognise that each is a uniquely valuable individual. There are two fundamental differences between cloning and twinning, however. Twinning is a random, unpredictable event, involving the duplicating of a genetic composition which has never existed before and which at that point is unknown. Cloning would choose the genetic composition of some existing person and make another individual with the same genes. It is an intentional, controlled action to produce a specific known end. In terms of ethics, choosing to clone from a known individual, and the unpredictable creation in the womb of twins of unknown genetic nature belong to categories as different as accidental death is to murder. The mere existence of "identical" twins cannot be cited to justify the practice of cloning.

Controlling Someone Else's Genetic Makeup

Thus it is not the genetic identity that is the crucial point but the human act of control, and it is this element of control which provides the fundamental ethical case against human cloning. The biblical picture of humanity implies that we are far more than just our genes, or even our genes plus environmental influences, there is also our spiritual dimension, made in God's image, constituting a holistic notion of being, in which the relational element is as important as the individual. To be a person is to be in relationship. Hence it is vital that the relational implications of technology are considered alongside the ontological. It is against this picture that most Christians would see it ethically unacceptable to clone human beings as a matter of principle. In so far as genes are a fundamental part of our make up, to choose to replicate the genetic part of human make up technologically is a violation of a vital aspect of the basic dignity and uniqueness of each human. By definition, to clone is to exercise unprecedented control over the genetic dimension of another individual. This is quite different from the control parents exert in bringing up our children. Whatever the parents do or do not do, it is inevitable that they have a profound effect on their children. No one exerts the level of control involved in preselecting a child's entire genetic make up except by a very deliberate act. Moreover, a child can reject any aspect of its upbringing, but it could never reject the genes that were chosen for it. Such control by one human over another is incompatible with the ethical notion of human freedom, in the sense of that each individual's genetic identity should be inherently unpredictable and unplanned.

Instrumentality

Cloning raises a number of concerns arising from its consequences, of which instrumentality and risk are of especial importance. To replicate any human being technologically is a fundamentally instrumental act towards two unique individuals - the one from whom the clone is taken and the clone itself. In nearly all the speculative ideas for cloning a human would use the clone as a means towards someone else's end. They would be created as clones for the primary benefit not of the individuals themselves but of some third party. This would be the case for cloning a dying child or parent to help those bereaved cope with the loss, or cloning an infant with a predisposition to leukaemia, as a source of bone marrow which would suffer less tissue rejection problems. These violate a basic ethical principle, that of create another human being other than primarily for their own sake. There is an important distinction in Christian theology, which admits an instrumental role for animals, to a limited degree, but prohibits it in humans. To clone a child with leukaemia to provide compatible bone marrow would treat the cloned sibling to that extent as means to an end, for the benefit of a third party, rather than for their own sake, and without their consent. Dorothy Werth cited the controversial US case where this was done through normal reproduction, but I would question whether the fact that it worked is justification enough. Again, it is rightly said that we have mixed motives for why we want children, but that does not justify treating a child as a means to an end.

Infertility - an Exception to Instrumentality

An exception to this objection would be the idea of producing a child from an infertile couple by cloning one of them. But this raises other problems. Instead of being the unique genetic product of both parents, the child is a copy of one of them. For many Christians this would be a denial of a basic relational aspect of reproduction, just as in the case of surrogacy. For an infertile couple to have a child by cloning one of them would not normally be thought of as an instrumental act, and might at first sight sound like a compassionate option to offer to childless couples. As observed above, however, there could be serious ethical problems, notwithstanding the anguish which childlessness brings to many couples. It would not be the biological child of both parents in the normal sense. For many this might be seen as taking the technological harnessing of the desire for a child one step too far, a means which is not justified by the end. The tendency is becoming to demand parenthood as my right, as though it were some moral absolute. We are losing the Christian understanding of children are a gift, not a right which we can presume that God or life should give us on demand.

Psychological Effects - Identity and Relationship

There are a number of reasons why human cloning might be ruled out for the psychological dangers involved. No one knows what would be the effects on human identity and relationships of creating someone who is the twin of their father or mother, but born in a different generation and environment. Would the clone feel that he or she was just a copy of someone else who's already existed and not really themselves? Am I really someone else but put into a different womb? What will be my relationship to the one I was cloned from? No one can predict with any degree of assurance what the response would be. Presumably they would vary from person to person. I suggest there sufficient dangers for applying the precautionary principle should apply. In other words, even though one could not be sure how many people would suffer in this way, it would be wrong knowingly to inflict that risk on someone. Whose interests are being put first?

Physical Risk

Dolly took 277 attempts and nearly 30 failed pregnancies to get one success. To repeat the same thing on humans would be giving both the mother and the potential foetus an unacceptably high risk of damage. The basic science of fusing the cytoplasm and nucleus and reactivating the cell is very poorly understood. How many abnormal babies would have to be produced to get one right? There are sufficient unknowns about physical problems in pregnancy with cloned sheep and cattle to suggest that human cloning experiments would violate normal medical practice. Roslin researchers have said that there is no experiment that could be done to prove the safety of human clonig without casuing serious risk to humans in the process. Then there are also unknown factors of ageing. How old is Dolly? Is she her age since her birth, or her age since birth plus the age of the tissue from which she was taken? No one knows what the effect of nuclear transfer on ageing processes.

Social Risk

Finally, human cloning would bring grave risks of abuses to human dignity and exploitation by unscrupulous people. We have already seen examples of people offering cloning services for large sums of money, when there is currently no reasonable prospect of delivery, and apparently regardless of the risks involved or, in the case of Richard Seed, the rule of law. It is also an open door for abuse, in the way that another individual, a group in society or even the state could exert undue control over an individual. If anyone ever did unfortunately clone humans, it is important to counter the suggestion from science fiction that they would be subhuman androids with human bodies but no souls. More seriously, some papers from an Islamic perspective seem to imply that if reproduction is by human artifice, it lacks the spiritual element. Some Christians think the same. I do not, however, see any grounds that a cloned child would be any less human than another child. Why would God fail to make the child fully "in His image" just because the manner of conception? There would need to be considerable safeguards to avoid the risk of stigmatisation. It would be foolish to imagine that abuses could not occur.

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3. Non-Reproductive Cloning?

The announcement of mouse cloning opens up a whole field of research into other applications of cloning technology which would stop short of full human beings or animals. What applications are envisaged? At present all is speculative, but some of the implications could well be ethically contentious.

Two pieces of research announced in late 1998 suggest that, after many years of trying, scientists appear to have been able to "redirect" human embryos from their normal course of forming a complete person to becoming only certain types of body cells. Using special cells, known as stem cells, cells of, say bone marrow or different tissues, could be produce more or less indefinitely in the laboratory. In theory, this would open up immense potential for treatments of degenerative diseases where fresh cells could be injected into the patient, in that way that, for example, foetal brain cells have been used on some Parkinson's disease sufferers (currently with uncertain results). One problem with this is rejection by the body, but if the embryo were cloned from cells taken from one's own body, would it be possible to overcome the rejection? No one knows whether any of this can be done successfully and safely.

At the moment it is speclation, but it is seen as important enough to need to know what are the ethical implications of such developments, were they to be possible. During 1998, the UK Human Embryology Authority and Human Genetics Advisory Commission ran a limited public consultation on medical uses of cloning technology, both reproductive and non-reproductive (albeit that these most recent research findings came too late for public comments to be submitted. The joint report "Cloning Issues in Reproduction, Science and Medicine" in December 1998 proposed that the UK regulations should now be amended to allow research into cloning embryos for cell replacement and another non-reproductive application involving mitochondrial disease.

SRT's reaction to this proposal and the ethical dilemmas it poses is given in more detail in Cloning Human Embryos for Spare Tissues - an Ethical Dilemma. While we welcome the report's clear conclusion against the reproductive cloning of human beings, but we express deep concern about proposals to clone human embryos which would be used not for reproduction but as a source of replacement tissues. We also call for a much wider public debate of this issue before the UK amends the regulations to allow this controversial new development.

Some have speculated whether it would be possible on the basis of these discoveries could be the ability to grow not an entire human being, but living organs from cells. Experts at the Roslin Institute and a number of other authorities see this as very unlikely to be posible in most cases. There would be many immense practical questions to answer, and it would be naive to assume that just because we think it, science will one day find a way to do it. This would also raise a number of serious problems ethically. It could be almost as controversial as human cloning. This was brought into focus by the announcement in October 1998 of work in which headless frog embryos were produced by reprogramming cloned cells. This was extrapolated, rather over-sensationally, by the researcher to the possibility of creating separate human organs surrounded by sacks of skin, grown as it were in a test tune from reprogrammed, cloned cells. This was also reported briefly during an excellent BBC TV Horizon documentary on cloning. Aside from the technical questions begged by this extrapolation, there is a serious question about whether it would be ethically acceptable to create organs as separate entities from human tissue. This needs careful thought, rather than knee jerk reactions, but at first sight this would probably be unacceptable to many people. And this may be only a thought experiment, albeit a dangerous one, since to be of any use, one would have to have such an organ already existing at the same age and stage of development as the patient requiring one. Would this be possible without having a sustitute organ already growing from the time of one's birth?

Even this could be overcome, it could be argued that this was only justified in extremis and only for the benfit of the individual involved, or, with appropriate informed consent, a close relative. And underneath this partial cloning, lies the ethical problem known as "gradualism". By a progression of small steps you could eventually provide all the conditions needed to clone the entire human being, even though that had never been the intention of the research. This raises a much deeper question about how the direction of research is determined and controlled.

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4. What do you do with a Genie out of the Bottle?

It is impossible to reverse knowledge, but it is society's prerogative to state which pieces of knowledge should remain unused - "can do" never implies "must do". It is rightly illegal to clone a human being in the UK, but it would not be beyond human perversity for someone to try to do it elsewhere in the world. One UK doctor, who has publicly condemned the very idea, claims to have had people offering themselves for cloning or asking to have it done to loved ones. It would appear that some are attracted by the idea, but maybe they have not fully understood the implications. Even supposing someone would be stupid enough to try, there are many serious obstacles to be overcome. There is firstly the risk of imprisonment. A scientist would take the risk of ostracism from a disapproving medical and scientific establishment, and know that a journal would possibly refuse to publish any paper on the subject. Then he or she would have to persuade or induce dozens of people to take part in prolonged illegal experiments. It would need donors, egg cell recipients and surrogate mothers in fairly large numbers, to take part in experiments. Abnormally large progeny have resulted in animal cloning done to date, which suggests that there is serious risks to the health of the mother and any potential embryo.

So are we really supposing all this is almost certain to happen? There is a finite risk, but it is not 100%. According to some, it is well nigh inevitable. Many would not agree. There are many reasons why what is scientific possible is not always done. It is a commonplace that most active research scientists create far more potential research ideas than they have the time, people and money to pursue. There are presumably many things which it would be scientifically possible to do to live patients that are illegal which would be medically very useful for knowledge of the human disease. This does not mean that they are all inevitably done. Of course it is right to raise the question of cloning of humans as a result of the Roslin research, but let us keep a sense of proportion about the level of risk.

The Need for a Worldwide Ban on Cloning Human Beings

We need to be sure the UK legislation is adequate to outlaw any such activity, about which some have already expressed doubts, and there should be immediate moves to set up, if possible, an internationally binding treaty to ban experiments that would lead to human cloning. The Church of Scotland, along with many others, considers that attempts to clone human beings should be outlawed worldwide. It would be impossible to stop a "back street" clinic or a dictatorship from ignoring such an international treaty, but the lines need to be drawn. A second line of defence is also called for - the notion of the ethical scientist, for whom it would be against all professional principles to pursue such research. The attitude of the Edinburgh scientists in condemning the idea of human cloning as unethical is a good example.

For more about the legislation and social involvement on cloning, see our page How do we cope with these questions as a society?

5. Let's Hear it for the Animals!

The attention on speculating about cloning humans has also missed something of the point, namely the much more immediate impact of this work on how we use animals. See the pages Should we Clone Animals? and Cloning, Ethics and Animal Welfare.

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About Copyright

This page has been produced by the Society Religion and Technology Project of the Church of Scotland (SRT for short), and revised 21 August, 19 November and 17 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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SRT's CLONING PAGES
Report on Cloning to the Church of Scotland's General Assembly
Should we Clone Humans?	Should we Use Human Cloning for Fertility Treatment?	Comment on Korean Claim to Clone a Human Early Embryo
Cloning Human Embryos for Spare Tissues - an Ethical Dilemma	Non-Reproductive Cloning	Cloning - How Should Society Decide?
Should we Clone Animals?	Cloning, Ethics and Animal Welfare	Polly - the First Genetically Engineered Cloned Sheep
Looking Back a Year A.D. (After Dolly)	Is Germline Therapy a Step Closer?	Cloned Mice - Is the sky now the limit for cloning?
Links to other Cloning Pages	Send us your Comments	Links to Other SRT Pages

SRT's GENETIC ENGINEERING PAGES
Genetic Engineering Home Page	SRT Study on Animal and Plant Genetic Engineering	Preview of SRT's Book, Engineering Genesis	What is Genetic Engineering?
Animal and Plant Genetic Engineering Issues	Xenotrans- plantation	Patenting Life?	Human Genetics

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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.

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