Doctors Panayiotis Zavos and Severino Antinori claim they are ready to embark on the greatest human experiment of our age. They say they will attempt to clone a human being before the year is out. Most people think the objections to this are ethical – human cloning would create many moral dilemmas. There is another question that few ever ask: is the science actually ready yet for cloning healthy humans? Horizon follows the latest research, which has led many scientists to believe that Zavos and Antinori’s plans to clone the first human could end in tragedy. The programme also meets couples like Matthew and Desirée Racquer (above) who think cloning offers them the only way to raise a child who is truly their own. For decades, cloning remained within the realms of science fiction. The idea that instead of combining a sperm and an egg, a new human could be made from a single cell taken from an adult, seemed completely absurd. But that all changed in February 1997, when the Roslin Institute (right) introduced the world to Dolly the sheep – the first animal cloned from an adult. Ever since Dolly, scientists have been continuing to experiment with cloning animals. So far, they have succeeded in cloning sheep, cattle, pigs, goats and mice, fuelling the belief that humans could be next. An unreliable procedure But even Dolly’s creator, Professor Ian Wilmut, is concerned that beneath the veneer of success lies a disturbing reality. Most cloning attempts on animals so far have …
Dolly the Sheep became an instant celebrity in 1996 when UK scientists (quite literally) created the world’s first clone of a mammal using an adult cell. As controversial as Dolly’s creation was her early death in 2003.
The international press was abuzz: Does cloning violate scientific ethics? Is it right to produce a genetic copy that is evidently inferior till you hit the right one?
Dolly’s stuffed remains may have been relegated to the Royal Museum at Edinburgh, but the debates she started brought the issue of cloning a little too close to home: making genetic carbon copies of human beings.
Cloning Outlawed?
In 2005, the UN General Assembly (in a vote of 84 to 34) appealed to its member nations to ban any type of human cloning. Cloning is defined as the process of creating an exact replica of an organism, cell, or gene. The UN stated that human cloning is ‘incompatible with human dignity’ and goes against protecting human life.
Dozens of nations the world over have enacted laws that ban any type of human cloning. France, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, and Canada all have cloning embargoes in place.
But a couple of months after the UN General Assembly released its stand, South Korean scientists reportedly cloned 11 sick people and then killed their cloned embryos.
What about the US? Well, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, which Congress passed again in 2003 (it was first passed in 2001), is still sitting in the Senate. The Act bans, among other things, cloning human embryos.
After years of debate, a rival bill, which allows human embryo cloning but bans cloned embryos from being used to initiate pregnancy, was overwhelmingly voted down, 231 to 174. It seems that the Act is once more destined for endless debates in the Senate (which has its own version of the bill) just as it suffered in the House.
The only distinct similarity between the Senate and House versions of the Anti-cloning Act is the penalty: A maximum prison term of 10 years and a maximum fine of $1 million.
So, pending a law, is human cloning outlawed in the US because the UN says so?
Human cloning experiments are going through rough sailing not because of the UN directive (the US doesn’t exactly bow to the UN on its internal policies), but because the sitting President is dead set against it.
Cloning – What Americans Think…
It is President Bush’s firm stand that human life should never be extinguished or exploited to profit another. The American public agrees with him.
In a recent Gallup poll, over 60% were against human embryo cloning as opposed to around 30% that approved. What’s more, the anti-cloning percentage dramatically went up when it was explained that the embryos would be destroyed during research.
So cloning as a crime is a likely reality if a bill gets through within this President’s term. If it continues to sit in the Senate into the next administration, who knows what may happen.
3 Little Known Facts About Cloning
If cloning as a crime is ever submitted for voting in your state, here are a few facts you must consider.
1. Biotechnology Industry Organization has been aggressively pushing for state laws that allow cloned humans to grow past the fetal stage even until birth. The purpose: To harvest tissues for transplanting – so long as they aren’t kept alive after the newborn phase.
2. A number of biotechnologists are currently developing animal clones way past embryo stage. They then harvest animal parts and develop artificial-womb technologies.
3. Anti Cloning doesn’t always mean Anti Stem Cell research. Taking stem cells from adult tissues or umbilical cords isn’t ethically controversial since it doesn’t entail killing human embryos. This kind of stem cell research has repeatedly produced promising results in fighting diseases. Furthermore, many anti-cloning advocates (including legislators) are either afflicted with degenerative diseases or have family members that are.
On April 3, 2002, Dr. Severino Antinori announced he had successfully implanted a cloned embryo into a woman and that she was eight weeks pregnant. Dr. Antinori made his announcement while speaking at a conference on Healthcare Ethics in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Sharing the stage with Dr. Antinori was Dr. Haris Silajdzic, a former Bosnian Prime Minister and Hisham Yousuf, a representative of the Cairo-based Arab League. Dr. Antinori refused to disclose either the location or the nationality of his pregnant patient. He admitted that there was ‘risk involved’ but said he had pursued screening to reduce the risk of any deformity before the embryo was implanted and that the outcomes of cloning differed widely between species. Dr. Antinori also insisted that he was interested in therapeutic cloning and had to pursue his work in that area in other countries as it is outlawed in Italy.
In 1998, Dr Antinori announced plans to use cloning technology to help infertile couples have children. British scientists to produce Dolly the sheep, the world’s first vertebrate clone made from an adult mammalian cell, had pioneered the technology. In 2001, he predicted that he would complete the first human cloning operation within 18 months. The 56-year-old was previously best known for his work in in vitro fertilisation, and in particular for enabling women in their 50s and 60s to give birth. He shot to prominence in 1994 when he helped a 63-year-old woman to have a baby by implanting a donor’s fertilised egg in her uterus, making her the oldest known women in the world to give birth. Dr Antinori told an Italian newspaper recently that more than 1,500 couples had volunteered as candidates for his research programme, and it is known that he is working in close co-operation with Dr Panos Zavos, an American fertility expert.
Dr Antinori faces the outrage of those who oppose the procedure on ethical and moral grounds. The practice of human cloning is banned in Europe and formal legislation is now going through Congress in the United States. It is because of this reason that it is of more than passing interest that the ‘world breaking’ announcement was made at the Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi, as I feel this underscores a subtle continuing shift of the centre of cloning research from the western World to Middle Eastern and Asian localities. The United States has recently placed a five-year moratorium and ban on human cloning describing it as ‘a violation of human rights’. It has also allowed countries such as India and Singapore to pursue stem cell technology on its behalf. It is widely rumoured that China has already cloned many human embryos to use in therapeutic cloning and stem cell research. It now appears that the United Arab Emirates is interested in promoting the Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi in a new role of encouraging evolving scientific research within the Arab World. It is also acknowledged that officials such as the UAE Minister of Health Under-secretary Dr. Abdul Rahim Jaafar has more than a passing interest in making his nation the centre of cloning research. He already has stated that he intends to group other Arab League countries, the East Mediterranean Region Office of the World Health Organization, the Islamic Organization for Medical Services and the International Association of Bioethics together for the 2004 Congress of Bioethics, with the UAE as a possible venue for the event. He stated recently that we should explore how to preserve our fundamental human values and ‘adhere to our respective religious teaching in channelling new scientific knowledge to benefit our fellow man’.
Dr. Antinori spoke to the conference and reiterated his view that everyone had the right to pass on his or her individual characteristics to their offspring or to use cloning as a means to treat infertility. As doctors, we should also be aware that while Asian Muslims, Buddhists, and some Asian governments also oppose reproductive cloning, they apparently are not constrained by the ethical embryo debate, which has halted most cloning research in the Western World with the exception of Great Britain. Of more importance is the fact that the UAE, now appears to be challenging the Western World by staging the conference on ‘The Future of Genetic Engineering and Cloning’ in the Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi. Many scientists attending the conference noted accusations that Western (it would probably not be unfair to read Christian) thought and ethics is fundamentalist, rigid and ultimately destructive to science, medicine and the pursuit of knowledge. This is almost the antithesis of the fundamentalist Islamic belief recently seen in Iran that said that Western petrochemical research was ultimately antireligious. There is little doubt that the great cultural interface that exists between Christianity and the Islamic faith, which presently holds centre stage in our news, echoes through the debate about human cloning and human cloning technology.
