By Michelle Martin
Staff writer
As you read this, scientists working in labs around the world
are manipulating cells, trying to create a human clone.
Some plan to implant cloned embryos in a woman’s uterus, in hopes
of producing a living infant. For others, stem cells from cloned
embryos are the intended product.
Some of those scientists may have already succeeded, creating
the first human embryo that did not rely on two biological parents
contributing their genetic material.
“It would just be a matter of making enough attempts,” said Jesuit
Father Kevin T. FitzGerald, a cancer researcher and genetic ethicist
at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.
The idea of creating human life conjures up images of Michelangelo’s
painting on the Sistine Chapel, and FitzGerald often hears questions
about whether trying to clone people is “playing God.”
“I wish, in fact, we would play God,” FitzGerald said. “How does
God relate to us? God loves us, God brings healing, God does what
is best for us. God loves us so much he gave his only son over
to death to save us.
“We’re not playing God. If we were, we would be doing exactly
what we’re asked to do: be like God. What we’re doing is trying
to replace God, to make ourselves gods. And we are much worse,
whimsical and capricious gods.”
Word of cloned mammals has become commonplace since 1997, when
Scottish scientists let the sheep out of the bag by introducing
Dolly to the world. This spring, infertility specialist Panayiotis
Zavos of the University of Kentucky and Italian researcher Severino
Antinori announced that they would form a consortium to create
the first human clone. A religious group called the Raelians,
who are awaiting extraterrestrials’ arrival on earth, have announced
that they are trying to clone a dead 10-month-old boy.
Meanwhile, Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas and Dave Weldon of Florida,
both Republicans, introduced a bill April 27 to ban all human
cloning, whether intended to produce a child or not. Bills introduced
earlier this year would have allowed “therapeutic cloning,” or
cloning human embryos for stem cell research, but not cloning
intended to produce a baby.
Great Britain allowed therapeutic cloning earlier this year.
Cloning could create a supply of stem cells for research into
cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, diabetes
and even spinal cord injuries. Not only could it provide the embryos
for research, but if stem cell therapy works, patients could be
cloned to create stem cells that would be perfect genetic matches,
with much less chance of rejection.
Several U.S. firms, including Advanced Cell Technology and Geron
Corporation already have announced their intentions of cloning
embryos for research. Under currect U.S. laws, the government
cannot pay for such research, but it is not illegal.
Richard Doerflinger is associate director for policy development
for the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. For
him, cloning people to make babies and cloning people to cure
diseases are two sides of the same moral nightmare.
Cloned embryos created for stem cell research would essentially
be disposable human lives, Doerflinger said, made only to be destroyed
for the benefit of someone else.
“Creating and destroying human life in the lab would be ongoing
medical practice,” he said.
Such embryos would be virtually manufactured human material, made
to match the needed specifications, and destroyed when no longer
useful.
But cloning embryos in hopes of producing a child would be nearly
as wasteful. For every living cloned animal, there were dozens,
if not hundreds, of cloned embryos that did not succeed. The most
famous example, Dolly, was the only one of 267 cloned embryos
that grew to maturity.
Cloned children who survive face their own problems, experts say,
including the unrealistic expectations of those who want to design
a child to their own specifications.
The Raelians, the religious group interetsed in cloning, have
started a company called Clonaid. In a letter to a U.S. House
subcommittee investigating cloning, Clonaid Director Brigitte
Boisselier described the company’s efforts to clone a dead baby
boy, at the request of his parents.
“The belated twin of a dead child will not replace the first one,
but it will be one way to have this unique genetic code express
itself again, a first step towards eternal life. Further steps
are needed before we reach that level but this is one of the most
probable outcomes of this research,” she wrote.
A letter purporting to be from the father who wants his son cloned
said that when the baby died following an operation intended to
correct a heart defect, “I decided then and there that I would
never give up on my child. I would never stop until I could give
his DNA— his genetic make-up—a chance. I knew that we only had
one chance: human cloning. To create a healthy duplicate, a twin,
of our son. I set out to make it happen.”
The father didn’t say what will happen if the process doesn’t
work the way he expects. Since all of the cloned animals produced
so far have had some abnormalities, that’s an important question.
“If your product doesn’t turn out right, what do you do with it?”
FitzGerald said.
“Cloning is the ultimate depersonalization of human reproduction,”
Doerflinger said. “The human being is manufactured to pre-ordained
specifications, instead of being the fruit of a loving relationship
between husband and wife.”
To make a clone, scientists use a procedure called somatic cell
transfer. First a scientist obtains a cell from the person or
animal to be cloned, and extracts the nucleus, where nearly all
the genetic material resides. The scientist then inserts that
nucleus into an unfertilized egg, whose nucleus has already been
removed. An electric current stimulates the egg and nucleus to
interact and start cell division, forming a new embryo. The embryo
would develop stem cells that could be harvested in less than
two weeks. But removing the cells destroys the embryo.
“It is totally irrelevant to cloning whether the person being
reproduced consents to it at all or is alive or dead,” Doerflinger
said. “All one needs is a little bit of genetic material. It does
not live up to any sane idea of human reproduction.”
The process may have use when applied to animals, because researchers
could create whole herds of genetically identical sheep or cows
for experimentation, or they could create animals with desirable
genetic traits for agriculture or other purposes.
But to create human beings—whether embryos or infants—denies human
dignity, Doerflinger said.
“Children arise as the unpredictable mix of the genetic material
of two people,” he said. “It’s a way of making sure we respect
them as human beings. Each child has a right to be a surprise.
“The temptation is to take cells from people we think are the
ideal human beings and make more of them. The new human being
will know he or she was created only as the carrier of certain
genetic traits. The psychological implications of that alone—what
if I’m a clone of Einstein, and I want to go into playing the
piano? There is a great potential for that kind of trouble. This
would not be the same person with the same interests.”
When the first cloned baby is born, the Catholic Church maintains
the child must be treated as any other person, Doerflinger said.
“The church will be the first to accept and love a cloned child
as a human being,” he said. “The church has a long history of
accepting people who got here the wrong way. I think the question
is whether we treat that as a family.”
Because if someone wants to clone himself, what he ends up with
is not his biological child, but his identical twin.
FitzGerald, a medical researcher himself, cautions against turning
against all genetic research because of qualms about cloning.
“Don’t fall into despair,” he said. “This is the Easter season,
and as we learn from the Gospel, the only real sin is to despair.
For the most part, medical research is wonderful and can do wonderful
things. The fact that we can go overboard is part of the human
condition. The more technologically adept we become, the more
responsibility we have to act wisely.”
