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Society, Religion and Technology Project Church of Scotland Looking at the ethics of technology for a New Millennium

The cloning debate has moved from speculating about cloned humans to possible medical applications. Scientists suggest we might be able to clone embryos and reprogramme them to make replacement body cells for degenerative diseases. But what of the ethical issues?

Reproductive Cloning
Most people agree that it would be wrong to clone human beings for several reasons. Pragmatically it would be irresponsibly risky to try it on humans given the current animal welfare problems that led a Ministry of Agriculture committee to recommend a moratorium on commercial animal cloning. There are also relationship and psychological risks. But, above all, it's a question of principle. Cloning is an act of control, not just of a gene or two, but over someone else's complete genetic makeup. If an embryo splits into identical twins, it's a random event, which no one planned. The genetic makeup of that embryo was also unknown and unique. Cloning would take the genes of someone you already know and deliberately create another person to have exactly the same genetic composition. It is an act of control that no human being should make upon another. Human beings are much more than just genes, but genes are important ... and irreversible. All the many influences our parents or others make on us in our upbringing we can accept or reject, but once determined, we cannot change our genes.

Therapeutic uses of nuclear transfer cloning : Different questions
The emphasis on cloning has shifted to ways in which the technology could be used in medicine. Dolly was made by taking a cell from a sheep's udder and fusing it with a denucleated egg cell, to make a sheep embryo with the same genetic make up, i.e. a clone. This ability to reprogramme cells might be used to make replacement human cells for degenerative diseases. Instead of being implanted in the womb to make a baby, the cells of this early embryo would be reprogrammed to produce only certain cell types, known as embryonic stem cells, using recent discoveries in the USA. These cells could be grown in the lab and would be of the patient's own genetic type, so minimising rejection.

Is this a New Issue?
Currently this is illegal under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 1990. In 1998 the Human Genetics Advisory Committee and Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, however, recommended changing the existing regulations to allow for research. They did not examine the ethical issues of therapeutic cloning in detail, perhaps anxious to avoid further debate on the status of the embryo. But when parliamentarians voted ten years ago to allow limited embryo research, primarily on infertility, these new uses were not even on the horizon. The Government called for a second committee to look more closely at the science and ethics, due to report in Spring 2000.

Ethical Dilemmas - What is an Embryo?
There deep ethical conflicts about the nature of the embryo. One extreme sees the early embryo as just a ball of cells and nothing more. The other is that from conception onwards the embryo must be accorded the status of humanity, allowing no research or use that was not for the benefit of that particular embryo, and rejecting any technology that involves creating dispensable embryos. Many in the churches indeed take that view, but by no means all. Some have accepted that research might be permitted under limited circumstances, as in the present 1990 Act, seeing the embryo as having emergent human status. The current legislation reflects Baroness Warnock’s compromise view that the embryo should be accorded a special status, but less than a full human person.

Is it Unethical to Use Human Embryos for Cell Replacement?
To clone human embryos for cell replacement would now challenge this understanding. Most embryo research has been on issues of infertility, where the embryo has remained an entity. Cell replacement therapy would mean that the embryo would be used as a source of selected cells, instead allowing its normal development to become the totality of all the cells that make up a human being. In effect, it would turn an embryo from being an entity in itself to being treated merely as a resource, a means towards an end. Some see this as no different in principle from existing embryo research for reproduction, but for others this would push it beyond a limit of acceptability bounds of embryo use.

It seems unlikely that there will ever be enough eggs available to use cloned embryos routinely to produce replacement cells, even assuming all the science worked. On both ethical and pragmatic grounds the route ahead would be to aim for direct reprogramming without going via the embryo stage. It would be an appealing concept, if one could take a skin or blood sample and reprogramme the cells directly to become, say, brain cells for treating Alzheimer's. Few would find that ethically objectionable. The problem is that currently this could not be done without some limited research involving creating a cloned early human embryo. This poses an ethical dilemma. Would it be ethical to allow such limited research, with the sole purpose of developing a method that enabled replacement cells to be generated without the embryo stage? Should this have a proviso that if a point was reached where this aim was clearly most unlikely to succeed, then the research should then stop?

Some Other Ethical Dilemmas with "Therapeutic" Cloning

• If we have decide it is unethical to create a cloned baby, then how can it be ethical to create a cloned embryo knowing full well you would have to destroy it on ethical grounds?
  
• Is research which allows the creation of cloned embryos a “slippery slope” to having cloned people. Some researchers, perhaps with financial inducements could be tempted to find someone willing to be a surrogate mother and bring a spare cloned embryo to term.
  
• It might be possible to avoid a human embryo by fusing human cells with a denucleated cow egg, which could be reprogrammed. Quite apart from safety, this raises at least as many ethical problems over such a fundamental mixing of human and animal entities.
  
• The science of nuclear transfer cloning and human stem cells is in its infancy. Gene therapy promised much but has ended up raising premature hopes for patients, since it is a long way from delivering real treatments. No one can be sure at this early stage whether nuclear transfer cell replacement will actually produce therapies. How far is research justified?
  
• If this is not allowed here, will it happen somewhere else and we'll lose our UK lead? On that argument we'd still have slavery. What is more important : a UK commercial lead or a UK ethical lead? It is up to a democratic society to take responsibility for our enormous scientific and technological skills and decide in its own cultural context which it will allow and which not.
  
• Public attitudes to technology have changed a lot in 10 years, as both the scope and the problems have widened. The potential therapeutic uses of nuclear transfer cloning and stem cell technology genuinely do raise new ethical issues beyond what was covered by the 1990 Act, and which should now be widely discussed by the public and properly debated by Parliament.
  

What's the Church doing Here?
The SRT Project was set up in 1970 to examine the ethical & social issues of emerging technologies. From 1993-8 it ran expert working group on GM animals, plants and food, which included Ian Wilmut, leader of the Roslin cloning team. So SRT was in a unique position to offer informed ethical comment to the world, and has continued in the forefront of the international debate on cloning issues.

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Ref.no. CLONINF6 Revised 14/4/00.