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

Cloning for Therapeutic Purposes - What are the Ethical Issues?

Presentation to MPs, House of Comons, 10 February 2000

Dr Donald Bruce

Society Religion and Technology Project, Church of Scotland

Most people agree that it would be wrong to clone human beings. There are several reasons. Pragmatically it would be irresponsibly risky to try it on humans given the current animal welfare problems such that the MAFF Farm Animal Welfare Council wants 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 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 no human being should force upon another. We can accept or reject any other influences our parents and others seek to make upon us, but we cannot change our genes. We're much more than just our genes, but genes are pretty important!

Therapeutic uses of nuclear transfer cloning pose different sorts of questions. It is certainly an ethically appealing concept to create replacement cells for serious degenerative diseases, of the same genetic type to minimise rejection. If one could do this by taking 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 at the moment it looks as if one would have to do that by creating an cloned human embryo as an intermediate step.

This raises deep ethical problems, unless you see the early embryo as just a ball of cells and nothing more. That is one extreme. 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 dispensible 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.

To clone human embryos for cell replacement would now challenge this understanding. Hitherto embryo research has applied primarily to issues of infertility, in which 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. For many this would push it beyond the acceptability bounds of embryo research.

This poses a serious ethical dilemma for research. Would it be ethical to allow limited research where cloned embryos were created, with the sole purpose of developing a method that enabled replacement cells to be generated in future, without going through an embryo? Should this then have a proviso that if a point was reached where it was clearly most unlikely to be able to generate cells without creating cloned embryos, then the research should then stop?

There are also other ethical dilemmas.

• 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. A New Age cult called the Raelian Society advertises itself as seeking just such volunteers.
• 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.
• There are two popular fallacies : that science and technology will solve all their problems, and that nothing can stop them. My former background was the nuclear energy industry, where the opposite phenomenon has occurred. 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.
• If this is not allowed here, will it happen somewhere else and we'll lose our Scottish and UK world lead? The same argument could have been applied to not banning 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 developments it will allow and which it will not.

In the consultation by the Human Genetics Advisory Committee and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the ethical issues of therapeutic cloning were largely glossed, perhaps anxious to avoid further debate on the status of the embryo. It is interesting to note that of the limited number of respondents, most ethicists thought new ethical issues were raised and most clinicians did not. When parliamentarians voted years ago such applications were not on the horizon. Public attitudes to technology have changed a lot in 10 years, as both the scope and the problems have widened. I hope I have made a case to say that, whatever your view of the issue, 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.

Footnote : The SRT Project was set up in 1970 to examine the ethical and social issues of emerging technologies. From 1993-8 it ran expert working group on non-human genetic engineering, producing the book "Engineering Genesis", acclaimed as the most balanced study available on GM animals, plants and food. We had been fortunate to have Professor Ian Wilmut, leader of the Roslin cloning team, as a member of our working group. When Dolly the cloned sheep became a global issue, SRT was therefore in a unique position to offer informed ethical comment on cloning. SRT Director Dr Donald Bruce has since been much in demand, nationally and internationally, speaking and broadcasting on cloning and related issues. SRT continues its work on GM Animals and Plants and Cloning. It also has work in progress on Risk, Globalisation and Technology, and Sustainable Development.

See also Human Embryonic Cloning - A Submission to the Chief Medical Officer's Expert Group on Cloning.

See out 31 July 2000 press release in response to Evan Harris MP's comments on these issues : Need for Wider Public Debate on Therapeutic Cloning. Return to the Top of Page
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