by Professor Steve Best -
[email protected]
“Anyone who thinks that things will move slowly is being
very naive."
Lee Silver, Molecular Biologist
“Human cloning could be done tomorrow.”
Alan Trounson, in vitro fertilization clinician, Monash University
With the birth of Dolly in March 1997, a new wave of
animal exploitation arrived, and anxiety grew about a world of cloned
humans that scientists said was technically feasible and perhaps
inevitable. Ian Wilmut, head of the Roslin Institute team that cloned
Dolly, however, is not an advocate of human cloning. Rather, he believes
human cloning is unethical, dangerous, and unnecessary. With others, he
fears that the drive toward human cloning will thwart the far more
beneficial uses of cloning in animals and stem cell research. He
designed his revolutionary technology with one main idea in mind:
manufacturing herds of animals for human use. For Wilmut, the
biotechnology industry exists to use genetic information to cure disease
and improve agriculture. Whatever Wilmut’s intention, many scientists
and entrepreneurs he inspired have aggressively pursued the goal of
human cloning as the true telos of genomic science. Driven by market
demands for clones of infertile people, of those who have lost loved
ones, of gays and lesbians who want their own children, and of numerous
other client
categories, doctors and firms are actively pursuing human cloning.
Pro-cloning forces include the Raelins, a wealthy
Quebec-based religious cult which claims that their “Cloinaid” project
will produce a human clone by the end of 2001; infertility specialist
Panayiotis Zanos of the University of Kentucky who openly announces his
desire to clone humans; and the Human Cloning Foundation (www.humancloning.org),
an Internet umbrella group for diverse clonistas. One bioethicist
estimates that there are currently at least a half dozen laboratories
around the world doing human cloning experiments.
While cloning human beings is illegal in the U.S.,
Britain, and elsewhere, in many countries (e.g., Asia, India, Russia,
and Brazil), it is perfectly legal and human cloning is being pursued
both openly and clandestinely. In fact, there are at least two cases
where human embryos have been cloned, but the experiment was terminated.
According to the February 2001 issue of Wired. “In 1988, a scientist
working at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Massachusetts took a
human somatic cell, inserted it into an enucleated cow egg, and started
the cell dividing to prove that oocytes from other species could be used
to create human stem cells. He voluntarily stopped the experiment after
several cell divisions. A team at Kyung Hee University in South Korea
said it created an embryonic adult human
clone in 1999 before halting the experiment, though some doubt that any
of this really happened. Had either of these embryos been placed in a
surrogate mother, we might have seen the first human clone.”
Although many scientists think human cloning is possible
and inevitable, others think it is likely human clones already exist,
perhaps in hideous forms where they are studied on a Dr. Moreau-type
island. The breeding of monstrosities in animal cloning, the pain and
suffering produced, and the possibility of assembly-production of
animals and humans should give pause to those who want to plunge ahead
with human cloning. Animal cloning experiments produced scores of
abnormalities and it is highly likely that human cloning would do the
same. The possibilities of producing human monstrosities raises serious
ethical dilemmas as well as the question of the social responsibility
involved in care of deformed beings produced by human cloning
experiments. What sane person would want to produce a possibly freakish
replication of him or herself? What are the potential health risks to
women who would be called upon to give birth to human clones, at least
before artificial wombs make women, like men, superfluous to the
reproductive process? Who will be responsible for caring for deformed
human clones that parents and doctors renounce (it took 277 tries and
numerous monstrosities to get Dolly)? Is this really an experiment that
the human species wants to undertake so that, for example, infertile
couples can have their own children, or misinformed narcissists can
breed what they think will be their carbon-copy twins? What happens if
human clones themselves breed? What mutations could follow? What might
result from
long-range tampering with the human genome as a consequence from genetic
engineering and cloning?
Furthermore, as the TV-series “Dark Angel” illustrates,
there is also the possibility of a military appropriation of cloning to
develop genetically engineered herds of Ubermenschen (although no two
would be exactly alike). Indeed, will commodification of the humane
genome, eugenics, designer babies, and genetic discrimination all follow
as unavoidable consequences of helping infertile couples and other
groups reproduce, or will human cloning become as safe and accepted as
in vitro fertilization,
once also a risky and a demonized technology? Will developing countries
be used as breeding farms for animals and people, constituting another
form of global exploitation of the have-nots by the haves?
One thing is certain: the project of human cloning is
being approached in a purely instrumental, economic, and mechanistic
framework that doesn’t consider long-term consequences to the human
genome, social relations, or ecology. Or, if social relations and
consequences are considered, likely
this is from the perspective of improving the Nordic stock and creating
an even deeper cleavage between rich and poor as, without question, only
the rich will be able to afford genetically designed and/or cloned
babies with superior characteristics. This situation could change if the
state sponsors
cloning welfare programs or the prices of designer babies drop like
computers, but the wealthy will already have gained a decisive advantage
and “democratic cloning” agendas beg the question of the soundness of
human cloning in the first place.
Thus, I have worries about cloning not only due to the
history of science and capitalism, the commodification of the life
sciences, and how genetic technologies have already been used by
corporations like Monsanto and Du Pont, but also because of the
reductionistic paradigm informing molecular engineering. Ironically,
while biology helped to shape a postmodern physics, the most
sophisticated modes of biological science -- genetic engineering and
cloning research -- have not advanced to the path of holism and
complexity, but rather have regressed to the antiquated errors of
atomism, mechanism, determinism, and reductionism. The new
technosciences and the outmoded paradigms (Cartesian) and domineering
mentalities (Baconian) that informs them generates a volatile mix, and
the situation is gravely exacerbated by the commercial imperatives
driving research and development, by the frenzied "gene rush" toward DNA
patenting.
Yet if human cloning technologies follow the path of in
vitro fertilization technologies, they will become widely accepted, even
though a vast majority of U.S. citizens currently oppose it. Alarmingly,
scientists and infertility clinics have embraced human cloning
technologies all-too-quickly. After the announcement of the birth of
Dolly, they were tripping all over themselves to see who could announce
most emphatically that they would never pursue human cloning. Yet, only
months later, these same voices began to embrace the project. The demand
from people desperate to have babies or “resurrect” their loved ones in
conjunction with the massive profits waiting to be made is too great an
allure for biotechnology corporations to resist. The opportunistic
attitude of cloning media star Panayiotis Zavos is all-too-typical:
“Ethics is a wonderful word, but we need to look beyond the ethical
issues here. It’s not an ethical issue [!]. It’s a medical issue. We
have a duty here. Some people need this to complete the life cycle, to
reproduce.”
There are indeed legitimate grounds for the fear and
loathing of human cloning, but most anxieties are irrationally rooted in
an intuitive repulsion toward something that is seemingly “unnatural.”
Many such clonophobic arguments are weak. The standard psychological
objections, in particular, are poorly grounded. We need not fear Hitler
armies assembling because the presumption of this dystopia – genetic
determinism -- is false (although certain desirable traits could be
genetically engineered and cloned which might prove useful for military
powers). Nor need we fear individuals unable to cope with lack of their
own identity since identical twins are able to differentiate themselves
from one another relatively well and they are even more genetically
similar than clones would be. Nor would society always
see cloned humans as freaks, as people no longer consider test-tube
babies alien oddities, and there are over 150,000 such humans existing
today. The physiological dangers are real, but in time cloning
techniques could be perfected so that cloning might be as safe if not
safer than babies born through a genetic throw-of-the-dice. A valid
objection against human cloning and genetic engineering technologies is
that they could be combined to design and mass reproduce desirable
traits, bringing about a Gattaca-like society organized around
genetic/economic hierarchies and genetic discrimination.
While full-fledged human (“reproductive”) cloning may be
problematic for numerous reasons, scientists are also developing a more
benign and promising technology of stem-cell research, or “therapeutic
cloning.” Using similar technological breakthroughs such as led to
Dolly, stem cell research exploits the newly-found ability to isolate
human embryo stem cells, the master cells of the body that later
differentiate into functions like bone, nerve, and brain cells. The goal
is to direct the development of stem cells, to manufacture or clone
specific cells in order to make any kind of cell, tissue, or organ the
human body might need. While the U.S. still holds back funding for stem
cell research, Britain became the first country to legalize human embryo
cloning in January 2001 (with the proviso – perhaps impossible to
enforce -- that all clones would have to be destroyed after 14 days of
development and the creation of babies is prohibited).
Therapeutic cloning has tremendous medical potential.
Early in life, for example, each individual could freeze their stem
cells to create their own “body repair kit” if they developed heart
disease, Alzheimer’s, or lost a limb. There would be no organ shortages,
no rejection problem, and no need for animal exploitation. There is an
ethical issue of using aborted or live fetal tissue, and many religious
groups and hard-core technology critics vituperate against stem cell
research as “violating the inherent sanctity of life.” But therapeutic
cloning involves competing values, a conflict between putting to good
use the discarded by-products of in vitro fertilization research, and a
potentially utilitarian view of human life, between potential life and
full-fledged human beings in dire medical need. The moral quandary may
already be moot, however, as scientists are not discovering ways to use
stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood, and to directly transform
– in an amazing genetic alchemy – cells of one kind into another.
One problem with embracing therapeutic cloning and
renouncing reproductive cloning, however, is that the lines between the
two blur easily. Stem cell research that advances experimental knowledge
with embryos also logically would hasten the development of reproductive
cloning. There is, arguably, a real slippery slope from one to the
other, making stem cell research itself problematic.
The development of new genetic sciences and technologies
therefore is ambiguous, open-ended, and unpredictable. For now, the only
certainty is that the juggernaut of the genetic revolution is rapidly
advancing and that in the name of medical progress animals are being
victimized and exploited in new ways as, like it or not, the replication
of human beings looms on the horizon.
Go on to Dangerous
Wild Animal Bill Update
Return to 28 February 2001 Issue
Return to Newsletters
** Fair Use Notice**
This document may contain copyrighted material, use of which has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that this
not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the
copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your
own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
