HUMAN CLONING - The Ethical Issues
Dolly the cloned sheep caused a media sensation. But after the hype subsided, what are the real issues? Why would it be wrong to clone human beings? What about possible medical uses of the technology, like cloning embryos for replacement body cells?
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For Further Information
What's the Church doing Here?
Since 1993, the Church of Scotland's Society, Religion and Technology Project (SRT) has looked in depth at the ethics of genetic engineering and cloning in animals and plants with an expert working group. Leading scientists, including Dr Ian Wilmut, leader of the Roslin team that produced Dolly, discussed issues with specialists in ethics, theology, sociology and risk, which culminated in a major book "Engineering Genesis", published by Earthscan in November 1998. So when Dolly hit the headlines, the church was already in a position to offer a balanced and informed view on this local Edinburgh issue with global implications. In May 1997 the Church of Scotland General Assembly gave the first view of a UK church, and has been much quoted, for example in a recent UNESCO declaration on cloning. The SRT director is much engaged in UK, European and international ethical discussions about cloning and related issues, and has spoken, written and broadcast widely on them.
To help shed light on this confused and often misrepresented issue, we've produced three information sheets - this one on human and embryo cloning, another on Cloning for Therapeutic Purposes, and one on Animal Cloning.
What is Cloning?
The word "clone" comes from a Greek word for taking a cutting from a plant. To clone is simply to make an exact genetic copy of an existing organism. It happens naturally in many plants (if you bury a potato it sprouts clones of itself), and even a few animals. Significantly, it does not normally happen in mammals and humans, except for "identical" twins. And as we shall see, this is very different from cloning when it comes to the ethical aspects. Dolly changed all that. She is a sheep created by taking cells from the udder of a ewe and "reprogramming" them to create a new embryo by a process known as nuclear transfer, and implanting the embryo in another ewe. This was a biological revolution. It been thought impossible to grow a mammal from body tissue. And if it was possible in sheep (and now cattle and mice also), could it be done in humans? And if it could be, should it be?
What are the ethical objections to cloning human beings?
The overwhelming reaction from most people was that it should not be done, but a fear that someone might try. Statements opposing cloning human beings have issued from numerous national and international organisations, like the UN, the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, the European Commission's ethical advisors, a special report of the UK Human Genetics Advisory Council and Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, many professional medical bodies, and also the scientists at Roslin who cloned Dolly. But what exactly is wrong with human cloning? It is not enough that it is unnatural; much medical treatment is also unnatural. The key question is should we respect a biological distinction or celebrate our God-given capacity to override it? Four basic reasons have emerged: control, instrumental use of other humans, risk and relationships.
Control and Instrumentality
In one sense, cloning runs counter to the evolutionary need to maintain a basic level of genetic diversity, and the variety God has created in nature. What about identical twins then? We don't regard them as any less human. Indeed, we often comment on how different each is, because we are far more than just our genes. But the mere existence of "identical" twins does not justify the practice of cloning. Ethically, twinning and cloning are as different as chalk and cheese. In twinning an embryo whose genetic composition has never existed, and is unknown at that point, spontaneously splits into two. It is something random, uncontrolled. Cloning would select the genetic composition of some existing person and try and make another individual with the same genes. It is an intentional, controlled act to produce a specific known end. The crucial point is not the genetic identity but the human act of control of it. The most fundamental ethical case against human cloning is that no human being should have their complete genetic make up pre-determined by another human.
Cloning is also instrumental. Parents influence and select for their children in a thousand ways socially, but so far they have never been able to choose their genes for them. We can reject their upbringing, but we cannot change our genes. In most of the cases people have speculated about, like providing a donor for bone marrow for a sibling with leukaemia, the person cloned would not be created for their own benefit but someone else's. This is an instrumental way of using another human, as a means to someone else's ends. again this is unacceptable human control. An exception might be cloning one member of a couple to solve infertility, but this would raise other profound problems.
Risk and Relationships
No one knows the psychological effects of discovering one was the twin of one of one's "parents" or sibling. Am I just a copy of someone else who's already existed and not really "me"? What would be my relationship to them? Since we have no sure way of knowing in advance, we surely do not have the right knowingly to inflict that risk on another person. Lastly there is the physical risk, in the light of the animal cloning experience. It took 277 attempts and 29 implantations to produce one healthy Dolly. Significant pregnancy difficulties have been a often feature of cloning work in sheep and cattle. The understanding of the basic science of nuclear transfer is still rudimentary. No one knows how to guarantee that the cell reprogramming process would not lead to serious abnormalities in the offspring or danger to the mother. To translate such risks into humans would be utterly unethical medically. A leading researcher at Roslin has said he cannot conceive of an animal cloning experiment whose data would ever make it safe enough then to attempt to clone humans.
What about Cloned Human Embryos?
There is a good case for an international agreement to outlaw human cloning worldwide, and to create an ethical climate within science where such work would be unacceptable for a scientist to do. But if cloning people is wrong, what about medical applications? Cloning research could throw light on cell and embryo behaviour, fertility and ageing. Vital therapies might result, as in mitochondrial disease, but applications could also raise serious ethical questions. A UK report asks the Government to allow research into creating cloned embryos which might then be reprogrammed into lines of body cells, for use as replacement cells, say, in degenerative diseases. This is highly speculative. No one knows if it could be done, how serious are the prospects of therapeutic success, nor what risks there might be. But it would be an entirely new use of the human embryo, deliberately to create something which has the capacity to become a human being, knowing we will then redirect it to become, in effect, spare parts of human beings. Instead of being an end in itself, to be accorded "special status" according to the 1984 Warnock report, would this make an embryo just a means to an end? And can we ethically create cloned embryos, knowing that on ethical grounds we could never allow them to develop to become cloned babies? Inevitably this reopens the debate on the embryo and its status. That must mean a much wider, informed public discussion before the Government should legislate.
For Further Information
The Society, Religion and Technology Project has done extensive work on the ethics of cloning, with web pages on many aspects.
SRT Information Sheets
This is an SRT Information Sheet, one a series aimed at presenting some of the key aspects of current ethical and social issues in technology in simple terms for the non-expert. Other SRT Information Sheets are available on BSE, Car Use and the Environment, Church Energy Conservation Scheme, Land Use in Scotland, SRT Environmental Work, Genetic Engineering in Animals, Genetically Modified Food, Environmental Risks of GM Crops, Patenting, What is Genetic Engineering, Cloning for Therapeutic Purposes, Embryonic Stem Cells, Animal Cloning.
Contact
For more information about this and other ethical issues in technology, contact :
Society, Religion and Technology Project
Church of Scotland,
,
121 George Street
Edinburgh EH2 4YN.
Tel : 0131-240 2250, Fax : 0131-240 2239,
email : srtp@srtp.org.uk
Visit our Worldwide Website at :
http://www.srtp.org.uk
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Ref.no. CLONINF5 30/11/99.
