Closing In on Cloning

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD ORDER is hurtling toward us at Mach speed. With the announcement by Advanced Cell Technology that it has created the first human clones and developed them into six-cell embryos, the country finds itself at an ethical point of no return. Either Congress will ban human cloning, or human cloning will soon be a fait accompli.

With cloning—and its first cousin, embryonic stem cell research—biotech companies are embarked upon a radical enterprise. They intend to make vast fortunes by patenting and marketing products derived from the destruction of human life. If they succeed, certain categories of humanity will be reduced to a commodity with no greater moral standing than penicillin mold. For those who doubt the objectifying intent of this research, note the language of an October 1, 2001, press release by the Geron Corp., crowing that one of its recent research breakthroughs “greatly facilitates the development of scalable manufacturing processes to enable commercialization of hES (human embryonic stem) cell-based products.”

How did we get this far down the slippery slope this fast? After all, it has been only a few months since President Bush supposedly settled the stem cell debate by permitting limited federal funding of research using existing stem cell lines derived from human embryos. But as the Spanish Civil War was really just the opening engagement of World War II, the controversy over embryonic stem cell research can now be seen as merely a precursor to the greater clash over cloning about to unfold.

The struggle over embryonic stem cell research began less than two years ago when biotech companies and their allies within the bioethics movement convinced President Clinton to open the spigot of federal funding. Clinton was willing, but he had a significant legal problem to overcome. Extracting stem cells kills embryos and federal law (the Dickey Amendment) explicitly prohibits federal funding for destructive embryonic research.

What to do? Clinton’s bioethics commission recommended a Clintonian approach: Simply use private money to pay for destruction of the embryos and the extraction of their stem cells. After that, the federal government could pick up the tab. Clinton signed the order shortly before leaving office, and in doing so plopped George W. Bush right onto the hot griddle of an unwanted moral controversy.

Fulfilling his campaign promise to oppose embryonic stem cell research, President Bush promptly suspended Clinton’s executive order, sparking a furious, three-pronged political counterattack. First, making a strong appeal to the pragmatism that is central to the American character, promoters of embryonic stem cell research promised that only unwanted embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures and due to be destroyed would be used in the research. Since these embryos were doomed in any event, the argument went, we might as well get some use out of them.

The second prong consisted of junk science. Proponents of embryonic stem cell research, such as Senator Orrin Hatch, argued that the embryos in question weren’t really the early stages of human life because they would never be implanted. “Life begins in a womb, not in a Petri dish,” Hatch said. Others assured squeamish Americans that these frozen humans “no larger than the period at the end of this sentence,” as the pro-stem cell research propaganda had it, were actually “pre-embryos,” cells of no significant moral concern.

The third prong was an intensely emotional appeal—typically featuring testimony from celebrity disease or injury victims such as Christopher Reeve, Mary Tyler Moore, and Michael J. Fox—promoting embryonic stem cell research as a veritable cornucopia of miraculous medical cures. We were told that if the government would only fund such research, quadriplegics might walk, Parkinson’s patients would regain control over their bodily movements, and diabetics would be liberated from insulin.

This well-coordinated campaign was successful. Polls soon showed growing support for federal funding—so long as only doomed, leftover in vitro embryos were used. By last summer, the pressure to fully fund embryonic stem cell research had grown white hot, with more than 60 senators and 260 congressmen—including some of the president’s closest political allies—publicly vowing to overturn a decision by President Bush to prohibit federal funding. Pushed into this very tight political corner, the administration let it be known that President Bush had entered a season of deep moral contemplation.

In early August, in his first televised policy speech to the nation, Bush announced his decision. Informing the nation of the importance of the moral issues involved in the debate, Bush announced that he would permit limited federal funding of research involving stem cell lines extracted from embryos—
but only from cell lines already in existence. In other words, no federal money would fund research on stem cell lines taken from embryos that were not already dead.

Proponents of embryonic stem cell research howled at having their agenda substantially thwarted. Americans were warned, hyperbolically, that a new “dark age” in scientific research was descending. Some scientists spoke of pulling up stakes and moving overseas. At least one prominent researcher did just that.

Opponents, on the other hand, were divided. Some, including this writer, applauded the decision, believing that President Bush’s “compromise” had the virtue of being politically defensible and was thus the best decision possible under difficult circumstances. Others denounced the decision on principle, worrying that by permitting federal funding of research on cell lines that had been derived from the taking of embryonic human life, the imprimatur of the United States would be placed on the entire enterprise, making it almost impossible to prevent further encroachments by the Brave New World Order. That judgment will be tested in the attempt to outlaw human cloning.

IT MAY well be more difficult to outlaw human cloning than it was to restrict federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. The earlier debate was essentially a struggle to win over the heart and mind of one man: President George W. Bush. But the president cannot settle the cloning dispute with the stroke of a pen on the signature line of an executive order. It will require legislation that the Republican House and the Democratic Senate can agree upon. That will be no easy task, considering the awesome lobbying and public relations power of the biotech industry, which is now fully engaged and determined to keep human cloning legal.

Still, opponents of human cloning would appear to have a strong hand. The American people are very squeamish about cloning. President Bush supports a ban, and he is a far more popular leader today than when he announced his stem cell decision. Moreover, the House of Representatives already passed a strong ban last year in a lopsided bipartisan vote.

But a formidable hurdle remains: the United States Senate. Majority Leader Tom Daschle has prevented S 790, legislation virtually identical to that which passed the House, from coming to the floor of the Senate before this spring. But all signs are that the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 is in for a very bumpy ride. One indicator: The Senate recently refused to enact a six-month legal moratorium in the wake of ACT’s cloning announcement.

And so the fight is on. If a ban on human cloning is to pass in the Senate, its supporters will have to surmount the following series of tactics by cloning enthusiasts.

THE FALSE DISTINCTION BETWEEN “REPRODUCTIVE CLONING” AND “THERAPEUTIC CLONING.” To keep human cloning legal, cloning advocates seek to distinguish between “reproductive cloning,” which they are willing to prohibit, and so-called “therapeutic cloning,” which they urge remain legal. According to this argument, reproductive cloning consists of implanting a cloned embryo into a willing woman’s womb for the purposes of gestation and birth. Outlaw this activity to your heart’s content, cloning proponents argue, because bringing a cloned embryo to term can’t yet be safely accomplished. But don’t prohibit the creation of human embryonic clones destined to be experimented upon, because to do so would unduly interfere with medical research.

But the distinction is false. The act of cloning does not take place when a baby clone is born. It takes place when an egg, which has had its nucleus removed and replaced with genetic material of the individual to be cloned, is stimulated to begin embryonic growth. Once that process begins, a human clone exists.

At this point, a clone that will be used in research is no different in kind or nature from one destined for implantation in a uterus. To put it another way, a clone is a clone is a clone. The only question remaining is the fate of the new cloned human life. Merely banning clones for use in reproduction would free biotech companies to make all of the human clones they desire, without limit—so long as they destroy them rather than bring them to birth.

THE THREAT THAT MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS WILL NOT HAPPEN WITHOUT CLONING. Only six months ago the country was most earnestly assured by supporters of embryonic stem cell research that all we need to achieve our miraculous medical future are the stem cells of doomed in vitro embryos. Now, some of these same advocates argue—and just as earnestly—that all we need to achieve our miraculous medical future are the stem cells taken from human clones.

What happened to limiting research to IVF embryos? It turns out there may be a hitch that could prevent stem cells harvested from normal human embryos from being used in future medical therapies: A patient’s immune system could reject tissues grown from embryonic stem cells that are injected into the body in the same way the body strives to reject transplanted organs. But, the theory goes, if the stem cells were extracted from a clone of the patient, the body would not reject the treatment because the tissues would be virtually identical to the patient’s.

Of course promoters of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research knew this during the earlier debate. They just didn’t talk about it, realizing that if the American people suspected embryonic stem cell research would lead directly to human cloning, their cause might be lost. Now, with the stem cell debate behind them, it is as if the earlier assurances about limiting embryonic research never happened. This raises an important question: Why should Americans believe the new assurances that human clones will not be used for reproductive purposes, when the former promises about embryonic stem cell research were disingenuous?

It’s also the case that the “promise” of research cloning is wildly speculative. Researchers don’t even yet know whether they can maintain a human clone long enough to extract stem cells. (Cloning experiments on primates seem to indicate that maintaining a human clone may be exceedingly difficult.)

Nor do they know whether embryonic stem cell therapy itself will be able to cure diseases and overcome disabilities. In this regard, it is worth noting that the same level of enthusiasm existed about using tissues from aborted or miscarried fetuses a few years ago. Yet, that research has been generally disappointing and, in one experiment, devastating to the human subjects suffering from Parkinson’s disease who were injected with such tissues.

JUNK SCIENCE, SQUARED. Pretending that in vitro embryos weren’t really human life during the stem cell debate pales in comparison with the junk science being shoveled in the cloning debate. One argument is that clones aren’t distinct human organisms but mere cells, akin to those that fall off your body when you scratch your nose. “To commit ourselves morally to protecting every living cell in the body would be insane,” Ronald Green, the Dartmouth bioethicist and longtime promoter of destructive embryonic research, told U.S. News and World Report. (It wasn’t by chance that ACT selected Green to be on its corporate ethics committee.) In the same article, Robert Lanza, ACT’s medical director, made the equally ludicrous mirror-image argument that “all cells are embryonic” because now DNA can be extracted from any cell in the body for use in the construction of a clone. Pro-cloning propaganda thus asserts both that individual somatic cells are akin to embryos and that embryonic clones are nothing but mere (somatic) cells.

Each of these assertions is wrong. Somatic cells, such as those your toothbrush destroys during your morning brushing, are minute parts of the greater organized whole that is a human being. On the other hand, clones in the early stage of development are no different in kind or nature from normal embryos at the same stage of growth. Each is an individual, self-contained form of human life, with a specific genetic makeup and gender.

Nor are individual body cells any more “embryonic” than are ovum or sperm that have not joined in fertilization. Just because a cell has the potential to contribute to the creation of a new human life, that does not ipso facto transform the cell into the realization of the potential before it actually happens. Until that time, it is merely a cell, no more and no less.

Here is the biologically accurate truth about what would happen if I submitted to embryonic stem cell therapy derived through cloning:

• My DNA would be extracted from one of my somatic cells.
• The nucleus of an egg that had been purchased from an anonymous young woman by the biotech company holding the patent to my treatment modality would be removed.
• My DNA, consisting of 46 chromosomes, would be inserted into the area of the egg that formerly contained the nucleus.
• The genetically modified egg would then be stimulated to begin embryonic development.
• The resulting embryo would essentially be my identical twin brother. His biological parents would be my parents.
• When my twin brother reached about 14 days of embryonic development, he would be destroyed for his stem cells.
• These stem cells would then be coaxed into differentiating into the type of tissue I needed for my medical treatment.
• A line of these now differentiated cells would be maintained and nurtured until enough tissue existed to be injected into my body.
• My dead twin brother’s tissues would then be injected into me, to treat my illness.

These are the facts that should be the subject of the cloning debate, not junk science and euphemistic pro-cloning propaganda that blurs vital distinctions and deconstructs precise scientific definitions.

THE CLAIM THAT VIABLE ALTERNATIVES DO NOT EXIST. Promoters of cloning/embryonic stem cell research either pooh-pooh the potential of an alternative source of stem cells or damn it with faint praise. But scientists who have been researching the medical uses of adult and alternative sources of stem cells have already made tremendous strides toward the development of effective stem cell therapies for a wide variety of illnesses and disabilities—without having to resort to embryonic sources. For example, Canadian researchers have discovered that stem cells in the bone marrow of adults can apparently repair organs without being rejected by the patient’s immune system. These cells even appear to be safely transplantable between species. If this breakthrough pans out, the alleged need for cloning could utterly disappear.

Meanwhile, the Journal of the American Heart Association recently published a study involving stem cells found in human umbilical cord blood. When the umbilical cord blood was injected into the tails of rats, within hours the cells migrated into the animals’ brains and began repairing stroke damage. Even rats treated one week after a stroke demonstrated some improvement, according to the report. These are the scientific breakthroughs that promoters of cloning/embryonic stem cell research can only hope will begin to be achieved years from now.

The stakes could not be higher in the struggle to ban cloning. But proponents of a ban will not succeed without confronting the false distinctions, bad science, and misleading propaganda of cloning enthusiasts. When the Senate takes up the cloning debate later this year, we will confront the most fundamental of issues: Does individual human life have inherent value simply because it is human? If the answer is yes, then we will ban human cloning as an immoral objectification and unethical commodification of human life.