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A year ago on 23 February 1997today, Dolly the sheep, the world's first mammal cloned from an adult cell was announced (although she was born in July 1996). This created an extraordinary level of interest. The Society Religion and Technology Project Internet webpages on cloning have continued to receive about 400 visits a day for almost the whole year, with inquiries from all over the world. The unprecedented media and public interest has not always resulted in a balanced coverage and debate, however. Claims about rapid progress towards human cloning, doubts about the exact origins of Dolly, and both enthusiasms and fears about medical applications - these are examples of the exaggeration that has been as much a feature of the discussion as the issues themselves.
The claims of Dr Richard Seed to be able to clone human beings within a short time are probably very much more hype than reality. The technology is still in its early days, and shows the sort of uncertainties one would expect at this stage. Some animal welfare concerns over cloning will need to be resolved before it could be used more widely. These suggest, however, that to attempt the same thing in humans ought not to be alowed, as it would put mother and foetus at serious risk, quite apart from the strong worldwide ethical objection to Cloning Human Beings. Even for fertility treatment, this presents some serious ethical problems, see our page on Should we Use Human Cloning for Fertility Treatment?.
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There has also been much publicity given in both the UK and USA to the possibility that Dolly may have originated in foetal cell material and not from an udder cell. The source of the doubt was in a letter to the US journal Science in late January, claiming that because no one has succeeded in repeating the work yet, its validity must be doubted. In terms of strict philosophy of science there is a point - one of the abiding princples of science is that for a discovery to be truly "scientific" it has to be reproducible. But it would equally be scientifically unreasonable to throw serious doubt before a reasonable time has elapsed for such a repeat to be performed and published. It took nearly 18 months for Roslin's earlier (and technically easier) cloning of sheep from foetal cells - Megan and Morag - was repeated by a New Zealand group. To describe the Dolly discovery as an "anecdote" when only 10 months had elapsed to do a repeat, on a piece of research which took Roslin 277 attempts, seems somewhat premature from a scientific point of view.
It raises some suspicions as to the why the doubts were suddenly being cast at this particular point in time. One wonders if it is too much of a coincidence that the letter was published a week before the US Senate was scheduled to take a decision not to allow a rapid passage to a bill which proposes banning the creation of cloned human embryos. If doubt could be cast on whether mammals can be grown from somatic tissue, it is easier to argue that the bill might be less pressing.
In terms of the science, Roslin agree that there is a very remote possibility that the cells from which Dolly grew were not from the udder of a pregnant ewe but from cells circulating in her bloodstream which had come from the foetus she was carrying. They are setting up a test to compare Dolly's DNA with that of a sample taken from the tissue of the original ewe. Even if the unlikely proved to be true, it would still mean that Dolly was a clone, but just that she had come from foetal tissue, like Megan and Morag a year before. And since the main technological development in sheep and cattle is being done with foetal cells, this makes little practical difference in the main area of research. The big difference it would make is to the idea of reprogramming adult somatic cells, and the uses to which that might be put. Until another year has been given for a repeat of Dolly, it would seem premature to cast serious doubt.
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The first extension of the work to cattle was announced earlier this year and a second case is report by PPL Therapeutics in the USA. This is simply another logical step in the application of the Roslin method of nuclear transfer, and raises no particular objection from the Church of Scotland. In May 1997 its Report on Cloning to the General Assembly supported the limited application at the Roslin Institute and PPL Therapeutics to genetically modifed cloned farm animals, producing medically useful proteins in their milk. It would be opposed, however, to the extension of Roslin's cloning technology, not only to cloning human beings, but also to the routine cloning of animals for production, seen as a step too far in applying mass production methods to animals. For more about why we think this, see our page on Cloning Animals Cattle are the most likely animals to which this might be done. Meanwhile we shall be monitoring how these latest developments are applied.
The Church of Scotland left open for the time being its view on medical applications which might arise out of the Roslin technique, short of cloning a full human being. Some of these might prove ethically questionable; some might not. It was encouraging that in the UK the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Human Genetics Advisory Committee produced a consultation document seeking public debate on this issue. It is vital that the debate is not swayed either by unbridled fears or exaggerated scientific optimism, and that it takes due account not only of rational argument but also the more intuitive public reactions and basic underlying values these express. Unfortunately the resulting report was lacked the expected substantial ethical discussion of this issue. See SRT's immediate Response to the report "Cloning Issues in Reproduction, Science and Medicine".
For an extensive discussion of other cloning issues see our set of pages on Cloning Issues
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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!
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email us at :
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Dr.Donald M.Bruce,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, or our SRT Publications List.
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,Return to Contents
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