Close the door on cloning

There's an old saw about a man whose wife comes home unexpectedly and finds him in bed with his naked mistress. "Who is that woman?" the outraged wife demands. The man, a surprised and innocent look on his face, says: "Woman? What woman?"

Cloning apologists remind me of that philandering husband. Their opponents point out that a cloned human embryo is a human life, and the cloners reply with: "Human life? What human life?"

Unfortunately, it seems to be working, as the media and nervous politicians continue parroting the line that a human-clone embryo is not really human.

The biotech industry has nothing to lose and everything to gain from this. Hoping to make vast fortunes from patented "products" derived from the destruction of embryonic life, Big Biotech is counting on being able to create an unlimited supply of human clones. Their problem: The American people believe there is something inherently valuable about human life. Cloning sheep and other animals is one thing - but cloning humans, that's different.

The House of Representatives has already passed a strong ban. President Bush strongly supports outlawing human cloning and is guaranteed to sign legislation as soon as it reaches his desk. The only task remaining before cloning humans becomes illegal is passage of the ban by the United States Senate.

Pushed into a comer, pro-cloners responded by mounting an intense publicrelations and lobbying campaign aimed at thwarting passage of S-790, the Senate counterpart to the House anti-cloning bill. The cloners' approach: Agree to outlaw "reproductive" cloning (that is, implanting a clone into a womb for purposes of gestation and birth) - but allow so-called "therapeutic" cloning (cloning used for research, that culminates in the death of the clone) to proceed unhindered.

But such a policy would open the door to the unlimited cloning of human life-- because the act of cloning does not occur at birth. A clone is created when the nucleus is removed from a human egg and implanted with genetic material taken from the person being cloned. The egg is then stimulated and reacts as if it had been fertilized. Once this occurs, the act of cloning is complete. After that, it's only a matter of what's done to the human life that has been created: research which destroys it (therapeutic cloning) or implantation in a womb (reproductive cloning).

And here's where the cloning advocates get disingenuous. In order to allay Americans' disgust toward human cloning, Big Biotech argues that a human embryo created by cloning isn't really a human life. Embryology textbooks, however, will beg to differ. The science of the matter is that once embryonic development commences, a separate and distinct human life exits. For the first eight weeks of its life, it is known as an embryo. Thereafter, until birth, it is called a fetus.

In either category, the developing life is an individual, self-contained form of human life with its own genetic makeup and gender. Given sufficient time, healthy genes, and the right environment in which to gestate, it will result in the birth of a human baby. But-whether or not the embryo is ever born-scientifically, it is a human life from the beginning of its existence as a distinct organism.

But that truth hinders the cloning agenda. So, advocates have mounted a campaign to redefine words. The following are just a few of their rhetorical gambits. The myth of the "pre-embryo:' One of the most pervasive arguments made

by promoters of human cloning-as well as those defending embryonic stem cell research (ESCR)-is that embryos younger than two weeks' development are really "pre-embryos." There's just one problem with that assertion: There is no such thing as a pre-embryo.

Don't take my word for it. Princeton biologist and cloning enthusiast Lee M. Silver admitted in Remaking Eden that the term pre-embryo has "been embraced wholeheartedly ... for reasons that are political, not scientific," He further states that the term "is useful in the political arena-where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo (now pre-embryo) experimentation..." Or we can turn to basic embryology. The authors of the textbook Human Embryology & Teratology have refused to recognize the existence of a "pre-embryo" because: (1) it is ill-defined; (2) it is inaccurate; (3) it is unjustified, because the accepted meaning of the word embryo includes all of the first 8 weeks; (4) it is equivocal, because it may convey the erroneous idea that a new human organism is formed at only some considerable time after fertilization; and (5) it was introduced in 1986 "largely for public policy reasons."

The clone embryo is merely a collection of dividing cells. A more recent attempt to strip the clone of its humanity claims that the embryo clone is nothing more than dividing somatic cells that are no different, in kind or nature, than the cells you lose every day in your shower. Pro-cloner Alan Russell, executive director of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative, wrote in a recent opinion column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

All cells contain DNA, which gives them the ability to reproduce. But cloners have discovered that if one removes the DNA from mom's egg cell (producing an empty cell) and replaces it with her daughter's DNA, the newly produced cell can survive ... We then have in our hands a fresh cell which from now on will look like her daughter's cell ... In a dish, technology will exist to take that cell and simply convince it to multiply-clone itself ... The process is called cloning because the new cell created in the laboratory has the ability to copy itself again and again before turning itself into the liver cell that your loved one so desperately needs.

If there were an Academy Award for disingenuousness in advocacy, Russell would be a shoe-in. First, the entity is not called a clone because its cells divide. If that were true, all cells would be clones-since all cells replace themselves through cellular division.

Second, a clone is so named because the cloned entity is virtually identical, genetically, to the provider of the genetic material used to replace the nucleus of the egg. (I say "virtually" because a minute amount of genetic material from the egg becomes part of the genetic makeup of the new cloned entity.)

Third, while it's true that replacing the egg nucleus with the DNA of the cloned person is the primary technique used to clone in the laboratory, this genetic transfer is not all that happens. As stated earlier, the cloner must next stimulate the genetically modified egg to grow in the same fashion as it would had it been fertilized. Thus, just as Dolly the cloned sheep is not its mother, so a cloned human embryo is not merely a somatic cell line derived from the person who was cloned; it is a separate and distinct living entity.

Finally, the "new cell" does not "copy itself again and again" until, as if by magic, it suddenly becomes various body tissues. Rather, if the cloned embryo survived long enough he or she would go through exactly the same stages of development as any other baby-from an embryo, to a fetus, to birth. Indeed, as the clone embryo nears two weeks' development, its makeup has changed dramatically from what existed at the single-cell stage. Like its naturally created counterpart, he or she would now be made up primarily of undifferentiated stem cells, which would, given the time to develop, become all of the tissues of the body-- such as, for instance, the liver tissue referenced by Russell. It is these stem cells that are the current targets of the biotech industry.

"If it has the ability to twin, it isn't human:' Some cloning supporters claim that an embryo isn't really human life until it can no longer become an identical twin. The idea seems to be that until the time in embryonic development when identical twinning cannot occur, the embryo isn't really a human individual. Since human research clones would be destroyed prior to that time, destroying the clone would not actually take a human life.

The argument is ridiculous. Naturally occurring identical twins originate from the same fertilized egg. (Fraternal twins develop from different fertilized eggs.) Twinning occurs early in gestation when the single embryo splits into two identical embryos-a natural form of cloning. These identical embryos are now siblings.

Before twinning, an embryo-whether naturally conceived or cloned-is an individual, self-contained embryonic human life with a gender and an individual genetic makeup. After identical twinning, there are now two individual, self-contained human lives, each having an identical gender and genetic makeup. In other words, there are now two human lives instead of one. However, even though they appear to be identical genetically, each life is unique. (For example, should the twins ever be born, each would have different fingerprints.)

Advocates of the Brave New World Order know that, in the cloning debate, we confront the most fundamental issue possible: Does individual human life have inherent value simply and merely because it is human? They also know that if the answer is yes, we will ban human cloning as an immoral and unethical objectification of human life.

(This would not mean abandoning medical research into the potential of human cellular therapies. To the contrary, by dropping our pursuit of cloning and ESCR, all our resources and energies could be aggressively applied to pursuing adult/ alternative stem-cell therapies that offer the potential benefits of ESCR-without degrading the value of some human life to that of cattle herds or timber forests.)

But if Big Biotech and its apologists are able to convince the public that the answer is no-if they succeed in excluding embryos from our common humanity in order to justify harvesting their parts-the value of human life itself will be transformed from an objective good into a matter of mere opinion. That, in turn, would lead us to create subjective criteria by which to judge which humans have lives that are sacrosanct, and which do not.

And, it turns out, this is exactly what the modern bioethics movement is already doing. According to "personhood theory," being a part of the human community is not what matters. What counts is being part of the "moral community." Those who belong are "persons," a status gained-whether by a human or an animal-by possessing certain cognitive abilities, such as being self-aware over time. Those who do not belong are "non persons," humans (and other life forms) that have insufficient ability to reason, and that therefore have lives of significantly less moral concern.

The humans generally cast into the outer darkness of non-personhood include all unborn life (whether created by cloning or by fertilization); newborn infants; people with advanced dementia; and those in persistent coma, or who have other significant cognitive disabilities. Not only do these humans not possess the right to life, they may not have the right to bodily integrity. Indeed, it has been argued in the world's most respected medical and bioethics journals that the body parts of non persons-whether organs, corneas, or embryonic stem cells-should be available to harvest for the benefit of persons. In this sense, the debate over cloning and ESCR is merely one battlefield of a much larger war.

Cloning Reality

Brave New World has arrived at last, as we always knew it would. On January 22, 2001, Britain's House of Lords voted overwhelmingly to permit the cloning and maintenance of human embryos up to 14 days old for the purposes of medical experimentation, thereby taking the first terrible step toward the legalization of full-blown human cloning. Meanwhile, an international group of human-reproduction experts announced their plans-current legal prohibitions be damned-to bring cloned humans to birth in order to provide biological children to infertile couples. They expect to deliver their first clone within 18 months. The ripple effect on human history of these and the events that will inevitably follow may well make a tsunami seem like a mere splash in a playground puddle.

Human cloning is moving slowly but surely toward reality despite intense and widespread opposition throughout the world. Many resisters worry that permitting human cloning would remove us from the natural order. As the venerable Leon R. Kass has so eloquently put it, cloning brings conception and gestation "into the bright light of the laboratory, beneath which the child-to-be can be fertilized, nourished, pruned, weeded, watched, inspected, prodded, pinched, cajoled, injected, tested, rated, graded, approved, stamped, wrapped, sealed, and delivered."

Kass's point is that once human life is special-ordered rather than conceived, life will never be the same. No longer will each of us be a life that is unique from all others who have ever lived. Instead our genetic selves will be molded and chiseled in a Petrie dish to comply with the social norms of the day. And if something goes wrong, the new life will be thrown away like some defective widget or other fungible product. So long, diversity. Hello homogeneity.

Perhaps even worse, widespread acceptance of cloning would be a deathblow to the sanctity/equality of life ethic-the cornerstone of Western liberty from which sprang our still unrealized dream of universal human rights. The premise of the sanctity of life ethic is that each and every one of us is of equal, incalculable, moral worth. Whatever our race, sex, ethnicity, stature, health, disability, age, beauty, or cognitive capacity, we are all full moral equals within the human community-- there is no "them," only "us."

Cloning stands in stark opposition to this equalitarian dream. It is-and always has been-the quintessential eugenic enterprise.

Eugenics, meaning "good in birth," directly contradicts the self evident truth enunciated by Thomas Jefferson that all people are created equal. Eugenicists believe that the moral value of people is relative, or to put it another way, that some of us are better than others of us. Eugenicists seek to "improve" humanity by breeding out the "undesirable" traits of those deemed less worthy. Indeed, the pioneers of the eugenics movement worked for more than 50 years during the late 1800s and into the middle of the 20th Century to eliminate the genes of the "unfit" from the human gnome, first by encouraging proper eugenic marriages (positive eugenics) and more perniciously, by involuntarily sterilizing those deemed to have undesirable physical and personal traits (negative eugenics).

Anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge-alas, a scarce commodity in these post-modernistic times-knows where that led. In this country alone, 60,000-plus people were involuntary sterilized. In Western Europe, eugenics belief systems combusted with social Darwinism and anti-Semitism to produce the Nazis and thence to the Holocaust.

Today's eugenicists are not racist or anti-Semites but they exhibit every bit as much hubris as their predecessors by assuming that they-that we-have the right to direct the future evolution of humanity, only now rather than having to rely on clunky procreative planning they literally grasp the human genome in their hands. Cloning plays a big part in these plans as the patriarch of the modern bioethics movement, Joseph Fletcher, a wild eugenicist, well knew when he wrote nearly 30 years ago that cloning would "permit the preservation and perpetuation of the finest genotypes that arise in our species."

What are these supposedly "finest" genotypes? Most neo-eugenicist cloning advocates worship at the altar of the frontal lobe, valuing high intelligence and logical thinking in much the same way that founding practitioners of eugenics valued the blue eyes and blond hair they saw each morning in their own mirrors. Thus, Princeton University's Lee Silver hopes through cloning to create a "special group of mental beings" who "will be as different from humans as humans are from the primitive worms ... that first crawled along the earth's surface." Yet Fletcher, Silver, and most others of their ilk almost always miss the point that smart people are not necessarily good people. And they rarely discuss designing people with the most important human capacities of all: the ability to love unconditionally, gentleness, empathy, the deep desire to be helpful and productive. Ironically, these highest, best human characteristics are often found in people with Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities-the very people who the neo eugenicists believe should be evolved intentionally out of existence whether through genetic manipulation or if necessary, selective abortion, and infanticide.

Eugenics, as awful as it is, is only the beginning of the threat posed to the natural order by human cloning. Some cloners have decided that if they are going to "play God"; they might as well do it all the way by creating altogether new life forms. Indeed, scientists have already used cloning techniques to add jellyfish genetic material to a cloned monkey embryo, manufacturing a monkey that glows in the dark. Nor is human life itself immune from such "Dr. Meraux" forms of manipulation. For example, some in bioethics and bioscience support the creation of chimeras-part human and part animal-beings Joseph Fletcher called "parahumans" who he hoped would "be fashioned to do dangerous and demeaning jobs." In other words, Fletcher advocated the creation of a slave race of mostly-- humans designed by us and for our use. "As it is now," the bioethics patriarch wrote in his typically snobbish fashion, "low grade work is shoved off on moronic and retarded individuals, the victims of uncontrolled reproduction. Should we not program such workers 'thoughtfully' instead of accidentally, by means of hybridization?"

Fletcher's dark dream of human/animal chimeras is well on its way to reality. Not too long ago Australian scientists announced they had created a "pig-man" through cloning techniques, and allowed the hybrid to develop for more than two weeks before destroying it. Last year, a biotech company took out a Europe-wide patent on embryos containing cells both from humans and from mice, sheep, pigs, cattle, goats, or fish. Where such manipulations will lead may be beyond comprehension.

Cloning presents humankind with the postmodernist version of the Faustian bargain. Through cloning, we are told, our greatest dreams can be realized: the barren can give birth, genetic anomalies and disabilities can be eliminated at the embryonic level, near immortality will be within our grasp as replacements, for worn out organs can be grown in the lab for transplantation without fear of bodily rejection. But the devil always demands his due-the higher the "value" of the bargain, the greater the price.

In cloning technologies we may face the highest price of all: the end of the perception of human life as "sacred" and the concomitant increase in the nihilistic belief that humans are mere biological life; an increasing willingness to use and exploit human life as if it were a mere natural resource; eventually, the loss of human diversity itself-and these are just the foreseen consequences. The unforeseen consequences of mucking around in the human gnome may be worse than we can imagine. As Leon Kass has written, "shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder."

Spinning Stem Cells

The pattern in the media reportage about stem cells is growing very wearisome. When a research advance occurs with embryonic stem cells, the media usually give the story the brass-band treatment. However, when researchers announce even greater success using adult stem cells, the media reportage is generally about as intense and excited as a stifled yawn.

As a consequence, many people in this country continue to believe that embryonic stem cells offer the greatest promise for developing new medical treatments using the body's cells-known as regenerative medicine-while in actuality, adult and alternative sources of stem cells have demonstrated much brighter prospects. This misperception has societal consequences, distorting the political debate over human cloning and embryonic-stem-cell research (ESCR) and perhaps even affecting levels of public and private research funding of embryonic and adult stemcell therapies.

This media pattern was again in evidence in the reporting of two very important research breakthroughs announced within the last two weeks. Unless you made a point of looking for these stories-as I do in my work-you might have missed them. Patients with Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis received significant medical benefit using experimental adult-stem-cell regenerative medical protocols. These are benefits that supporters of embryonic-stem-cell treatments have yet to produce widely in animal experiments. Yet adult stem cells are now beginning to ameliorate suffering in human beings.

Celebrity Parkinson's disease victims such as Michael J. Fox and Michael Kinsley regularly tout ESCR as the best hope for a cure of their disease. Indeed, the Washington Post recently published a Kinsley rant on the subject in which the editor and former Crossfire co-host denounced opponents of human cloning as interfering with his hope for a cure. Yet as loudly as Fox and Kinsley promote ESCR in the media or before legislative committees, both have remained strangely silent about the most remarkable Parkinson's stem-cell experiment yet attempted: one in which researchers treated Parkinson's with the patient's own adult stem cells.

Here's the story, in case you missed it: A man in his mid-SOs had been diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 49. The disease grew progressively, leading to tremors and rigidity in the patient's right arm. Traditional drug therapy did not help.

Stem cells were harvested from the patient's brain using a routine brain biopsy procedure. They were cultured and expanded to several million cells. About 20 percent of these matured into dopamine-secreting neurons. In March 1999, the cells were injected into the patient's brain.

Three months after the procedure, the man's motor skills had improved by 37 percent and there was an increase in dopamine production of 55.6 percent. One year after the procedure, the patient's overall Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale had improved by 83 percent-this at a time when he was not taking any other Parkinson's medication!

That is an astonishing, remarkable success, one that you would have thought would set off blazing headlines and lead stories on the nightly news. Had the treatment been achieved with embryonic stem cells, undoubtedly the newspapers would have screamed loudly enough to be heard. Unfortunately, reportage about the Parkinson's success story was strangely muted. True, the Washington Post ran an inside-the-paper story and there were some wire service reports. But the all-important New York Times-the one news outlet that drives television and cable news-- did not report on it at all. Nor did a search of the Los Angeles Times website yield any stories about the experiment.

Human multiple-sclerosis patients have now also benefited from adult-stemcell regenerative medicine. A study conducted by the Washington Medical Center in Seattle involved 26 rapidly deteriorating MS patients. First, physicians stimulated stem cells from the patients' bone marrow to enter the bloodstream. They then harvested the stem cells and gave the patients strong chemotherapy to destroy their immune systems. (MS is an autoimmune disorder in which the patient's body attacks the protective sheaths that surround bundles of nerves.) Finally, the researchers reintroduced the stem cells into the patients, hoping they would rebuild healthy immune systems and ameliorate the MS symptoms.

It worked. Of the 26 patients, 20 stabilized and six improved. Three patients experienced severe infections and one died.

That is a very positive advance offering great hope. But rather than making headlines, the test got less attention than successful animal studies using embryonic cells. The Los Angeles Times ran a brief bylined description, while the New York Times and Washington Post only published wire reports. Once again, the media's almost grudging coverage prevented society at large from becoming acutely aware of how exciting adult-cell regenerative medicine is fast becoming.

Meanwhile in Canada, younger MS patients whose diseases were not as far advanced as those in the Washington study have shown even greater benefit from the same procedure. Six months after the first patient was treated, she was found to have no evidence of the disease on MRI scans. Three other patients have also received successful adult-stem-cell grafts with no current evidence of active disease.

It's still too early to tell whether the Canadian patients have achieved permanent remission or a cure, but there can be no question that the research is significant. Yet the story was only publicized in Canada's Globe and Mail and in reports on Canadian television. American outlets did not mention the experiments at all.

These Parkinson's and MS studies offer phenomenal evidence of the tremendous potential adult cell regenerative medicine offers. At the same time, the unspectacular coverage these breakthroughs received highlights the odd lack of interest in adult stem-cell research exhibited by most mainstream media outlets. Nor are these stories the only adult-stem-cell successes to have gotten the media cold shoulder.

It's worth recapping just a few of the other advances made in adult-cell therapies and research in the last two years, all of which were significantly underplayed in the media:

Israeli doctors inserted a paraplegic patient's own white blood cells into her severed spinal cord, after which she regained bladder control and the ability to wiggle her toes and move her legs. (I only saw reporting on this case in the Globe and Mail, June 15, 2001.)

Immune systems destroyed by cancer were restored in children using stem cells from umbilical-cord blood. (There was a good story in the April 16, 2001 Time, but other than that I saw no reporting.)

At Harvard University, mice with Type I diabetes were completely cured of their disease. The experiment was so successful that human trials are now planned. (This was reported in the July 19, 2001, Harvard University Gazette, but I saw no coverage at all in the mainstream press.)

Diabetic mice treated with adult stem cells achieved full insulin production and all lived. This is in contrast to an experiment in which embryonic stem cells injected into diabetic mice achieved a 3 percent insulin production rate and all the mice died. (According to the May 2001 STATS, published by the Statistical Assessment Service, the embryo experiment made big news while the media ignored the adult cell experiment.)

How many humans have been treated by embryonic stem cells? Zero. Indeed, before human trials can even be safely undertaken researchers will have to overcome two serious difficulties that stand between patients and embryonic-cell regenerative medicine: 1) ES cells cause tumors, and 2) ES cells may be rejected by the immune system. Surmounting these difficulties-if they can be surmounted at all-will take a very long time and much expense. There is no risk of rejection with adult cells, by contrast, because they come from the patients' own bodies. Nor, at least so far, does adult-stem-cell therapy appear to cause tumors. This puts adult therapies years ahead of the game.

The media continue to imply that embryos hold the key to the future. But increasingly, it looks as if our own body cells offer the quickest and best hope for regenerative medicine. The time has come for the public to insist that the media stop acting as if adult stem cells are the "wrong" kind of stem cells, and report to the American people fully and fairly the remarkable advances continually being made in adult regenerative medicine.

[Wesley J. Smith, a frequent Review contributor, is the author of Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America (Encounter Books). The following three essays appeared on National Review Online (www nationalreview.com) January 14, January 31, and April 23, 2002, and are reprinted with permission.]

Copyright Human Life Foundation, Incorporated Winter 2002
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