Electronic Journal of Biotechnology Universidad Católica de Valparaíso ISSN: 0717-3458 Vol. 5, Num. 2, 2002

Electronic Journal of Biotechnology, Vol. 5, No. 2, August, 2002

Editorial

Human cloning: the ethical challenge

Alfonso Gómez-Lobo

Georgetown University, White House Council on Bioethics, gomezloa@georgetown.edu

Code Number: ej02016

In November of 2001 Advanced Cell Technology, a company based in Massachusetts, USA, announced the first known attempt to clone a human organism. For many people following recent developments in biotechnology this did not come as a total surprise. Four years earlier Ian Wilmut had made public the successful cloning of Dolly, the sheep whose photograph has been seen all over the world. Since a mammal had been reproduced by cloning, wouldn't the next natural step be to attempt to use the same procedure to replicate humans?

The procedure itself is best described as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transplant (SCNT), the removal of the nucleus of an egg and the insertion of the complete set of chromosomes taken from an adult cell. In the case of humans this means that the resulting cell with its 46 chromosomes will be genetically almost identical to the original cell, with slight differences derived from the mitochondria of the egg. The admirable thing is that with proper stimulation and adequate nutritional environment, the genes in the chromosomes can be made to reprogram themselves and thus initiate the life of a new organism that has analogous characteristics to the naturally conceived zygote.

The Massachusetts experiment failed. After two or three divisions the organism died, but the ripples of the resulting shock continue to expand in every direction. A high barrier had fallen. Scientists had crossed the dividing line between animal and human clonal experimentation.

Why did they do it? Human motivation is a complex phenomenon which is not easy to identify even within oneself, but which has to do with the consequences expected from one's actions. At present there are two conceivable aims of human cloning: (a) to reproduce a complete human being, to produce, that is, a human Dolly, and (b) to have an organism which in principle can yield information and cures for illnesses that at present cannot be successfully treated. Since the isolation of embryonic stem cells by Thomson and Gearhart in 1998 the second goal seems to have become a strong motivating force: if transplantation of stem cells (after a certain degree of differentiation) provides a cure for, say, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, and if virtual genetic identity assures against rejection of the cells by the recipient organism, then a human clone can become an invaluable therapeutic tool. The labels "reproductive cloning" and "therapeutic cloning" have thus become part of our vocabulary.

When we stop to think about the two applications of cloning some troubling questions begin to arise. Would it be right to manufacture a child with genetic characteristics specified in advance by those who decide who it is they are going to reproduce? Should a child bear the burden of knowing, for example, that he was cloned using a somatic cell from a genius such as Einstein? Would it be right to manufacture a human embryo solely for research purposes, an embryo that has to be destroyed for it to yield the coveted stem cells?

Moral philosophy, however, is today a deeply divided field of normative thinking and views on human cloning are accordingly quite divergent. In the public opinion of Western democracies it is quite common to see the prevalence of vaguely held utilitarian and liberal views. The key element in utilitarianism is its consequentialism, its principle that actions are morally right if they are conducive to the greatest good of the greatest number of people. The key element in ethical liberalism, on the other hand, is the norm that individuals are morally required not to engage in actions that entail harm to other human beings. The Kantian branch of liberalism gives a fuller meaning to this requirement by claiming that human beings should never be used only as means at the service of others, but should always also be treated as ends in themselves. As a professional philosopher I am committed to a more sophisticated form of traditional ethics that need not be defended here because the reasonable thing to do is to argue in the public forum starting from the most widely shared moral views, from the premises I can expect my interlocutors to accept.

Cloning to generate a child is held to be morally wrong by virtually anyone who has seriously considered the present dangers of the procedure. This is the opinion of President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Committee (June 1997) and of the US National Academy of Sciences (January 2002). In my view, both reports assume tacitly the "no-harm-to-others" principle in that they call attention to the dismal record of mammal cloning. A significant amount of animals die either before or after birth, and a high percentage of abnormalities and malformations have been observed. Up to now no successfully cloned animal seems to be perfectly normal. To submit a human child to such risks is of course morally unacceptable.

However, many of those who reject reproductive cloning add "at this time" with the implication that if the procedure later becomes safe it would be morally acceptable. I personally reject this position on the grounds that even if cloning becomes safe in animals, it will never be known whether it is safe in the case of humans until it is tried. The first human trials would require unacceptable risks. At a deeper level the main argument is that any human cloning would be an instrumentalisation of a human being without his or her consent. Any reason to clone a person would be external to the cloned person herself (curiosity of the researchers, a single man or woman who desires to have a genetically identical offspring, parents who want to have a genetically identical sibling for bone marrow transplantation for an ill child, etc.). I think that reproductive cloning will thus always remain an act of abuse and hence of injustice to the child herself.

Therapeutic cloning is usually justified on consequentialist grounds. It is argued that it will bring benefits to millions of people and is thus morally justifiable. This is the position of the Academy of Sciences and is widely shared. There are, in my opinion, serious objections to this view. First, it is by no means clear at this moment that those cures will be achieved. Accordingly the present Council on Bioethics uses the expression "cloning for biomedical research" (CBR) rather that "therapeutic cloning". And this is fully justified because no therapy for the cloned individual is intended. Second, it is not clear that cloned embryonic stem cell research is the only path to those cures. There is valuable work being done on adult stem cells that may well lead to clinical trials much sooner than the expensive and at present highly inefficient research on clones. Third, no consequentialist can ignore the liberal claim that in CBR others may be subject to harm for the benefit of the majority.

This leads to the heart of the dispute because support for CBR is usually coupled with the claim that cloned embryos are not "others" in the required sense, that they are not persons or human beings worthy of respect. Several arguments are deployed in favour of this claim, most of them relying on our common intuitions about persons: an embryo does not have any of the features we associate with persons (sensation, perception, thought, self-consciousness, etc). It is sometimes added that a clone is an artefact, not a member of the natural species of humans. In my view, all of these objections can be met. Dolly is a sheep, recently cloned rabbits can reproduce sexually (thus satisfying the definition of a natural species), and the presence of the full complement of human chromosomes entails that we here have an organism that in its natural surroundings (and if all went well) would actualise the powers of sensation, perception, thought, self-consciousness, etc. A human clone, if properly constituted, would be human.

I have addressed the strictly moral questions surrounding human cloning. But these are not the only questions that arise for scientists, philosophers, theologians and thoughtful people in general. The broader question is whether mankind should or should not take the step into what Francis Fukuyama has called "our post-human future."