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Cloning Research Commentary - Los Angeles Times - December 2, 2001
Last Sunday’s report of the first cloning of a human embryo had pundits wringing their hands. The announcement by a small biotech firm in Massachusetts, however, was pure hype. The researchers had not even formed viable human embryos—just fertilized eggs with their nuclei replaced that divided a few times, then died. Korean researchers reported the same thing a few years ago. Such experiments are a long way from human cloning, since a few cellular divisions can occur even in the absence of viable chromosomes.
But the reports couldn’t have come at a better time for Congress, which is eager to regulate this arena and is planning to take action early next year. We have to hope that this time out they come up with something very different from the Weldon bill, a draconian measure passed by the house last July that would have made scientists using cloning techniques in their quest for treatments for Parkinson’s, diabetes, and other diseases subject to 10 years in prison. The bill also would have criminalized the importation of the products of such research, so if progress were made in Britain, where such research is legal, and Americans went there for treatment, they could be jailed upon their return for bringing home the cells in their flesh.
It is frightening that an arcane theological debate about whether or not a tiny speck of cells is a human being could force a promising field of basic biomedical research to flee the United States for foreign countries. A consensus will never exist about moral questions of this sort. Even in the religious community, opinions differ. In Judaism and Islam, personhood begins about a month after conception, and before a proclamation by Pope Pius IX in 1869, even in Catholicism, ensoulment occurred not at conception, but after several weeks.
Religion has an important place in our hearts and lives, but it should not shape science policy. If Catholic dogma were our guide, birth control pills would be illegal; children of in-vitro fertilization would not exist, and evolution would only recently have been taught in school.
To oppose therapeutic cloning or its funding is one thing, to criminalize it quite another. It is beyond me how a majority of our Congressional representatives could argue for this when it is legal for a woman to have an abortion or to discard an embryo for any reason whatsoever. Do they see no inconsistency in guarding the right to destroy a 3-month-old fetus, while putting a doctor in jail for an experiment on a microscopic dot of cells that could legally be flushed down a toilet?
To imbue a few cells in a Petri dish with human rights defies common sense. They lack a fundamental necessity for coming forth into our world—a connection to a warm, nurturing womb. Elevating their protection above the needs of medical research that might save millions of real people suffering from real diseases shows a profound disregard for human life.
Some argue that blocking this research will stop cloning. But they are deluding themselves. Over 300 animals have been cloned, some 200 have survived, and most are healthy. Cloning a human is too dangerous at present, but wait a few years. We will see a human clone within the decade. And it won’t destroy our values any more than a "test tube" baby did.
Do people’s brains go dead when they hear the word clone? I’ve seen otherwise sane individuals respond with diatribes about growing people to harvest their organs. But chopping an organ out of a clone would be just much a murder as killing any other person. Clones are merely delayed identical twins. The idea is a bit strange, but clones are just not that threatening. You may already know one. Identical twins are clones, and though they’re similar, they’re unique individuals.
But perhaps clones are only the beginning. Might we not slide down a slippery slope into a dehumanized nightmare? Not as long as we remain capable of making nuanced moral judgments. And anyway, if this is a slippery slope, we are probably already on it. I suspect our path is more a slippery sidewalk. We may take a spill or two, but we’ll get up, brush ourselves off, and continue on our way.
If human cloning is enough to bring down civilization, heaven help us, because throwing up obstacles to regenerative medicine is not going to save us. We are unraveling human biology, and many coming developments will be discomforting. But vaccines, antibiotics, organ transplants, and test-tube babies were each initially viewed as unnatural.
We can’t avoid the coming advances and wouldn’t want to if we could. They offer too many potential benefits. The real question is not how we handle embryonic stem cells or genetically altered foods or any other specific technology, but whether we will continue to embrace the possibilities of the future or will pull back and relinquish these explorations to other braver souls in other regions of the world.
We can choose to give up our leadership in medical research and watch the British or the Chinese set the course, but that will signal our decline. Our fall may take a while, but it will come.
In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attack and the anthrax mailings, it is obvious that we face real enemies and dangers. Cloning and other advanced medical technologies, no matter how much they shake up our worldviews, are essentially on the side of life. They are intended to enhance our well being, not hurt us. The real dangers from biotech come not from this quarter, but from groups who have gone over to the dark side to weaponize ancient human enemies like plague and smallpox. We should not be so cavalier about stifling basic biomedical research, because ultimately, it may be what saves us.
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