Human cloning pushes the ethical envelope
Science fiction is becoming reality
Many ethicists say that the recent cloning successes by Scottish animal researchers is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But what exactly is the wolf the inherent danger? Is it immediate?
Since the announcement on Feb. 23 of the creation of a genetically identical lamb, religious, ethical, and legal professionals among others have warned of science fiction becoming reality people seeking to clone themselves for spare parts, stealing DNA and cloning people without consent, or even resurrecting the dead by cloning their unearthed genes.
These examples are fraught with scientific and legal impossibilities. But beyond the realm of possibility or not, the search to understand the human gene and how it works is now upon us. Ethics professionals should view this latest scientific breakthrough as a call to arms for new ethical thinking for the next century, some experts tell Medical Ethics Advisor.
Consider this, they argue: Is the most significant and inherent danger the act of cloning itself? No, say some bioethics professionals close to the subject. Like the tiny nucleus itself, this achievement is only one small piece of a much larger ethical and scientific quagmire that is in its infant stages.
"We are just beginning to uncover and control the basis of our lives," says Ronald M. Green, PhD, an ethicist who is developing an ethics program for the newly-created National Human Genome Research Institute in Rockville, MD. Green is also the director of the ethics institute at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
Scientists are just beginning to understand what is in our genes and what future medical advances may be possible. "The ethical dimensions of the science are just as infinitely complicated," he says. "What we [the ethics community] must develop now are the tools to make new investigations something that benefit society." Ethicists, scientists, and public policy makers should not act too quickly in deciding whether to promote or ban advancements such as human cloning, say Green and others.
Don’t base public policy on emotions
"We should not be enacting public policy based on the emotions of the day," warns Andrea Bonnicksen, PhD, professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, who has studied regulation of human embryo research on a national and international level. Bonnicksen tells MEA that in the past most countries sought to ban human cloning that involved embryo transfer.
"There are so many facets of ethics, science, and law to be considered here that it seems premature to consider any public policy change. We would be creating regulations for something we know almost nothing about," she explains.
"Our genes are merely the ground plan," says Thomas H. Murray, PhD, a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland.
Immediately following the announcement of the successful sheep cloning, President Clinton asked the national commission to conduct a "thorough review of the legal and ethical issues associated with the use of this technology" and with "recommendations on possible federal actions to prevent its abuse" by the end of May.
In early March he issued a directive banning the use of federal funds for human cloning research and called on privately-funded scientists to "implement a voluntary moratorium on all efforts to undertake human cloning." In the meantime, two separate committees in the U.S. House and Senate have held hearings to discuss similar regulations. (See list of current national and international regulations and their applicability, p. 42.)
Murray says the national commission will review current laws that might govern research with human subjects and provide adequate protections. It will also consider what new laws, if any, are necessary.
"Good ethics begins with good facts," Murray cautions. "It is essential that we keep in view the possible scientific, and ultimately the human benefits of research on animal cloning."
Murray and others outline some known and unknown facts about human cloning and some ethical questions. They are as follows:
• Twins are human clones, occasional accidents of nature but the result of one embryo dividing into two genetically identical ones.
• Genes can be suppressed and manipulated to do things they would not ordinarily do. The cloned sheep was created by suppressing the genes in the egg cell of one sheep and combining this cell into another to form the cloned sheep. Genes were manipulated to forget that they belonged to the first cell. In essence, the cell’s "memory" was destroyed.
National Institutes of Health Director Harold E. Varmus, PhD, testified before Congress in late February that this type of scientific breakthrough might lead to mature injured nerve cells regenerating, to the development of new skin for burn patients, and to turning off genes that cause cancer. Human cloning raises endless possibilities for curing diseases, reversing injuries, and ending the transfer of genetic abnormalities from one generation to another, Varmus says.
• Can the cloning of higher animals using the nuclear DNA of adults of that species be accomplished efficiently, or is Dolly, the cloned sheep, a fluke of science?
• Would the same technology used to clone Dolly work in humans?
• For what purposes might people want to clone humans or animals?
What benefit, what harm?
Dilemmas brought about by genetic research, including cloning, bring new meaning to the ethical principles of benefit vs. harm, maintains Green. The goal of the Human Genome Research Institute ethics program will be educational and consultative, he explains. It will address ethical issues that arise from the research of the more than 50 protocols involving human gene therapy.
For example, the NIH program will review the impact of genetic research on specific communities, on family relationships, and on the reinforcement of stigmatizations of individuals and ethnic groups.
Almost every new research protocol involves a dilemma regarding familial issues or potential conflict regarding parental rights usurping the interests of a child. Assuming parents know what is best for their children will take on all new meaning, Green anticipates.
Ethics ideally will shape the direction of genetic science in the future, says Green, including any animal or human research done on cloning. But he cautions that our society "should not stop everything in an attempt to stop one particular ethical problem."
The government can also regulate only federally funded research, and therefore any absence of guidelines on cloning and other research "will leave the field totally unregulated," says Green. "We need to find the best research by the best researchers and have it systematically reviewed."
Green and others on the NIH Human Embryo Panel warn that inaction, such as the result of non-acceptance of any of the panel’s 1994 report, may be as dangerous as overreacting and instituting an absolute ban against cloning before all of its implications are known.
[Editor’s note: The full text of the paper "Viable offspring derived from fetal and adult mammalian cells" along with an associated News and Views and Leader is available on the Nature world wide web site: http://www.nature.com]
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