“Epi-blog”

In what has been a look at an issue that is still under fire and yet to reach the height of debate, I bring these last few weeks and term to a close. This weblog has documented my inquiry into the controversy over human cloning, and we have seen how I, the researchers and the public debate this issue in the public square. As my research developed, my commentary turned toward the inevitable line-drawing and questioning of moral and ethical issues on what constitutes life while drawing upon my understanding of various ways of approaching embryonic research and the possibility of human cloning in the near distant future.

To explain to the reader, my sense of how human cloning will and has played out, I found that a number of experts in the field brought up the question of what constitutes life. In sum, there are two very different radical sides when debating embryonic research which can be crossed (and should be crossed) especially when attempting to draw lines over defining what a “life” is. We either need to protect and preserve all life because life begins at conception, or take the side that embryos do not have the value of persons – even if they are “lives” in a biological sense, they must be sacrificed to help born patients who “really matter.” Peter Singer of Princeton University, hailed by some as the most influential ethicist in the world argued that “if life is not sacred before birth, it is not sacred afterward either.” These lines of justifying cloning research are one of many radical views. However, protecting and preserving life begs us to question when life begins and what values we should place on embryos in creating clones or conducting stem cell research.

To raise one last point that I must mention in parting, one which so often is neglected, is that this type of research has been likened to experiments conducted during the days of the grotesque German experiments of the 1940s, the Nuremberg Code or the Tuskegee syphilis experiments in the 1950s. The polity of the debate and the ethical issues surrounding it turn the Nuremberg Code upside down: The dignity of a human subject will never stop researchers from doing research they think is extremely promising, because the promise of the research justifies defining those subjects out of the community of persons so we can make use of them. Researchers Richard M. Doerflinger, author of The Many Casualties of Cloning, says “beyond politics, the most important lesson of the cloning scandal is moral. Researchers, devoted to increasing human knowledge and bettering the human condition, have long been tempted to “cut corners” on ethics, including the ethics of protecting human research subjects, to achieve their admittedly important goals.” It has been further argued by this reasoning, if respecting a particular kind of human subject would prevent us from pursuing especially promising research; this is sufficient reason for refusing to respect that individual as a person. These are the kinds of attempts at line drawing that deserve attention yet raise the stakes even higher in the debate in what seems an almost impossible task to avoid.

I hope that I have raised some interesting points and that my methods and techniques have been helpful in providing more information. I have tried to provide a look into my own viewpoints as well through this controversy that is still unfolding as we progress into the unknown. Primarily, I hope that I have demonstrated that while no argument can be drawn in black and white, certainly we can find a middle ground as we come to terms with the argument in a manner that is ethical and ideological.

Consider the Word “Harm”

In 1971 geneticist James D. Watson – best known for his research on the structure of DNA – considered the potentially troubling implications of human cloning. He predicted, at the time, that if matters proceeded “in its current nondirected fashion” a human being born of clonal reproduction most likely would occur within the next twenty to fifty years…our time now. With his foresight he knew it was more that just a great possibility but the reality (as we are now seeing it come to fruition). But did he – and others – consider that if we were to proceed so nondirectionally what the affects to the children being brought into such families would be?

I take my argument for and against human cloning to what we consider safe, moral and ethical. We should ask ourselves whether cloning would serve important reproductive and familial needs, and if so, what the impact of allowing cloning in these cases would be. The concern should be in the best interests of the child because even if physical abnormalities are overcome there could be psychological “harms” associated with such cloning. Couldn’t also such harm to humans be identified as negligent parents, knowing of genetic diseases present in the genome passing them on to future generations be considered immoral? As I stated at the beginning of my line of inquiry, the aftermath is as important as the initial consideration to conceive in the first place. I also mention earlier that reproductive cloning only becomes unethical when using human lives is an experimental process.

When we attempt to draw the line between what should be allowed and what shouldn’t we create big waves in the debate. Therefore, do we oppose all human cloning because of its potential for grotesque misuse? It really is a moral and ethical issue that most people, I would hope, would delegate their judgments based on careful consideration of what the experts in the field report – on both sides. To make sound judgments for ourselves on the basis of personal philosophy (which may or may not have a religious underpinning) or of the ‘gut feeling’ that results from this, we have to turn toward the research in the field.

There is a fantastic article, Harming by Conceiving: A Review of Misconceptions and a New Analysis, on the harm vs. no harm argument by Carson Strong published in the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy (volume 30: 491–516, 2005). (Unfortunately, I couldn’t link the article because it is within a password protected database). If you are able, do have a look. Many issues I talk about here are explained there in great detail especially on the debate of existence vs. non-existence and knowingly creating children with significant handicaps as opposed to the alternative of never being conceived in the first place. That is a serious debate worthy of an entirely new line of inquiry perhaps in a forthcoming post(s) – or not!

Not Like You and Me

There is so much information out there on the subject and widely varying opinions on cloning and embryonic stem cell research but who are some of these opponents that say most arguments against cloning are really arguments against something entirely different than cloning? For instance an argument that says cloning is wrong because it kills embryos is not an objection to cloning but to any process that ends in the death of undifferentiated cells. More and more my position is evolving every time I read something new. Today, I came across a website, among many others, that publishes essays by the Human Cloning Foundation, a foundation that seems like it is made up of unsubstantiated propaganda, work with no backbone. Who some of these people are that make narrow-minded claims isn’t made clear. It sometimes sways me, however and my position has become more of the mindset that cloning for the sake of creating someone to look like someone else is ethically and morally wrong. Cloning for the sake of research and solving medical mysteries should lead the debate. Human cloning should be recognized as a possibility to cure diseases, prevent unnecessary deaths and offer the world answers to the most troubling questions as to the origins and cure for cancer and the like.

Could You Live in the Brave New World?

There is nothing really threatening to you and me about a clone. Twins are clones. A cloned person is no more a danger to anybody than any other person. If we take a look at the science and look at what is going on, every animal study out there says this is going to be very tough to create a human clone. You have to be loony to try to do it in people right now. We cannot make it work in animals. Until you hear somebody safely clone a primate, it may not be doable in people.

There are mainly three reasons I can think of beyond safety why cloning might be problematic. One is that it might be strange to be made in the image or appearance of somebody else who lived before you. If you were cloned Dolly-style you would know much about how you might look, much about your appearance and presentation to the world. That probably could be something of a burden. You would have people always looking at you and saying, “Gee you remind me of your mom.” People now already go through this without being actually genetically identical. It could be psychological or emotionally tough. Second, you could also get into some strange emotional relationships. If I were to clone a partner, I would be looking at someone eventually if they grew up, presuming they were healthy and it worked, who looked exactly like my partner except the clone would be twenty-five or thirty years younger! They would actually have the same genes as my partner. I could even have relations with this person, and not technically be committing incest (the "yuck factor"). You can find yourself waking up to people at home, relating to people in ways that would be deemed emotionally inappropriate or psychologically difficult. You could find yourself sort of falling in love or having inappropriate feelings toward people just by their appearance.

There is another kind of psychological or social issue that might be difficult. Genes are not destiny, they are sometimes destiny. Some diseases and conditions are controlled by our genes or heavily determined by them. You would know some things about your future. You would know what happened to your parents and certain health facts about them. You might know that you are going to get early onset breast cancer, or have a strong disposition to Type II Diabetes, or that you are going to go bald at thirty. Many other traits are under genetic control, not destiny. Some things are very tightly controlled by genes. It might be disturbing to have that information and have to live with it. You can ask people today if they want to get a test for Alzheimer's disease or Huntington's disease. If there is no cure, how many people could live with that?

Cloning Defined and Questioned

Let me start off by saying that the failure rates of cloning are enormous. You will recall when Dolly was cloned that about twenty of the embryos were constructed, out of more than 400 attempts, twenty actually began to develop. Of those, nineteen were either stillborn or stopped developing with defects. Only one animal was born alive. That was Dolly and she died 6 years later of some lethal sheep virus. So the average success rate from starter kits, to transfer to eggs, to Dolly, a live born animal, was really poor – roughly 1 in 400.

I was curious to find out how cloning works. There are three major ways clones can come into being. I found an article by Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, through the PSU database library that explained the different ways cloning can occur. In a simpler way of describing it, one method in making a clone is by twinning. If an embryo splits naturally in the course of its development, it can make two or more, sometimes three, genetically identical organisms. Twins are clones. The second method for cloning is to take embryos and try to split them. This is very technical, but in non-technical terms, basically, you get a big knife and chop the embryo in half. That is it. The third way to make clones is the most mysterious and remarkable way. You take DNA from adult body cells like from your foot, nose, or the lining of your mouth, take the genes out of those cells, put them into anything, and get them to turn back on and make another organism. How is this done? I am not entirely sure at this point but as John Robertson explains in his article Procreative Liberty in the Era of Genomics, "reproductive cloning [occurs] by somatic cell nuclear transfer. A somatic cell is de-differentiated at an earlier state, its nucleus is removed, and then is transplanted into an enucleated egg. After activation, the resulting embryo is placed in the uterus with the hope that it will implant develop, and come to term."

That’s all fine, you can clone all you want but you cannot recreate the dead or an absolute identical clone because you would have to recreate the environment they grew up in. This fact rings loud and clear in the complicated nature versus nurture debate over genes and the environment and what wins when thinking about inherited and learned traits. The need for interaction between embryo and environment reveals something very important about when life begins. In addition, very little is known about how well clones will do. As Robertson says, “it seems highly premature to attempt human cloning now.” I might agree. But there is a lot of fear that is being put into people’s heads about the serious dangers of cloning in that scientists might start cloning before its safety has been established. Reproductive cloning only becomes unethical when using human lives becomes experimental.

Perspective of the Future

I think the concerns about the safety of the procedure of human cloning are valid. The argument that we ought to wait to try cloning on humans until we have perfected the method on animals makes some degree of sense. But even so, suppose you were a slightly deformed human clone - would you agree that it was a terrible moral offense to have caused you to come into existence?

Our immediate emotional reactions to medical developments are not a reliable guide to their morality. Many seem too ignorant, narrow-minded, and prone to prejudice to appreciate the long-term benefits of technological development. Therefore, the “yuck factor” should be distrusted, not glorified.

Who knows when the first human clone will come into being, but by the time it becomes an adult, the moral debates over cloning may already be long forgotten. The present opponents of cloning may retire or move on to being outraged about other things.

Ultimately, I think cloning will not significantly change the world. Other issues will overshadow this technology but hopefully it will provide some infertile couples the chance to have a child of their own that they would otherwise have not had. Some people may try to use cloning to bring back a lost child or a loved one, not realizing that personal identity is not reducible to genetic identity. Furthermore, some people may choose to have a child that is a clone of a stranger they admire, perhaps a great scientist or athlete.

Scientists, politicians, and theologians have a choice. They can work against the developments that will make us posthuman and join the reactionary forces that condemn each new technological breakthrough that changes human nature. Or we can stand by the sidelines and passively watch the future unfold. Or we can actively participate in creating the future that will enable us to reach almost unimaginable levels of human flourishing and well-being through the use of advanced technology to defeat disease and aging and to increase our human capacities to entirely new levels.

The Perfect Human

The cloning controversy as a whole raises many political, social and philosophical questions about where the potential of human cloning might take us. For instance, will gene modification always be associated with the risk of unpredictable genetic side effects? Everything I’ve been exposed to thus far over the past couple months has me agreeing that it is our procreative liberty to preserve our own institutions and freedoms. However, with certain freedoms there are dangers because of the unknown possibilities. The possibilities only have one way to unfold, by trial and error, whether we fear the outcomes or not.

So, then, a question arises about the nature vs. nurture debate: Do our offspring carry the genes that predict disposition, is it their “nature,” or are our offspring shaped by their environment as some would call the “nurture” side of the debate. Human perfection couldn’t be achieved nor would we want to alter our biology because once we start down the path of human biological manipulation, we will be unable to turn back.