Date: 26 April 2002
Subject: Life Sciences

America is on the brink of cloning legislation – how far would or should it go?

This month there has been a flurry of reports concerning the intention of the American Congress to legislate on the issues of human cloning, with the President pressing for a complete ban.

Various bills are on offer, all would make it a crime to clone a human baby, something some U. S. and foreign researchers say they are working on. Some, however, would also ban "therapeutic cloning", in which embryos are harvested early in their development to try to coax so-called stem cells to grow into any body organ or tissue – other bills would protect such research.

On 10th October 2001 in a lab in New England, research scientist Jose Cibelli took human embryos, sucked out their DNA and replaced it with DNA from an adult human. Some were sill "alive" three days later. That week there was media frenzy about "First Human Clones" – though it is not really clear whether this is to be regarded in the same light as the claim made early this month by the maverick Italian doctor Severino Antinori (who runs a private gynecological clinic in Rome) that one of his female patients was now eight weeks pregnant with a cloned fetus. [http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_medical/story.jsp?story=282387] The latter announcement brought widespread scientific condemnation. Apart from the ethical considerations of such cloning, scientists believe that the "success rate" would be appalling, and that anyone born through such a process would presently be certain (like the famous Dolly the sheep) to age prematurely.

Most Christians see a lot of ethical problems and little point in full human cloning – but what about the use of embryonic cells? Should companies like "Advanced Cell Technology" be allowed to use embryos to develop cells useful for medicine? The idea is to replace the embryo DNA with adult DNA to cultivate tissue that then can be used to solve medical problems of the adult. Is it practical and is it moral?

Presently, it should be said, the technology involved looks fragile. An article "Don't Expect Miracles" in the New Scientist 1st December 2001 explored the issues. The process is carried out when the fertilized ovum is just a few cells, and none of them have then got anywhere near the "blastocyst" stage of some 100 cells. Vast numbers of such embryos would be needed, an impracticably long periods of time in developing the tissue to be any medical use. Side effects may be found – as in the catastrophic results of using embryonic cells to treat Parkinson's disease which led to the devastating side effects of uncontrollable movements [see http://members.tripod.com/~ngin/361.htm].

At present, then, the practical results of such research seem highly doubtful, but are they inherently immoral? We have, of course, to beware of "knee jerk reactions" to new medical technology as "unnatural". The first heart transplant, for example, caused such responses – but how many Christians now would object? This argument should never be used to argue "anything goes" – but it should make us cautious. Well if a newly fertilized human ovum is to be considered as a fully human person then doing anything with is must be wrong. Too many Christians, however (and this is nothing to do with whether they believe in evolution or not) this is not clear. The debate began in the eighties, with e.g. Anatomy Professor D. Gareth Jones (Manufacturing Humans - 1987) taking a different line from Dr Richard Winter (Choose Life - 1988). Personally I have some sympathy with both viewpoints in different issues – but in the present issue would tend more to the caution of Dr Winter. The moral doubts about dehumanization outweigh any plausibly likely benefits. Non-cloning methods for developing usable tissue should be pursued.