Who Am I and If So How Many? (21 page)

So where do we draw the line in modifying and manipulating nature to promote man’s interests, and how does our own nature factor in?

What is the Raelian cult up to, anyway? That ominous mélange of killer capitalism, science fiction, hippie dream, and horror church that some years back in Montreal announced the creation of the first human cloned baby and with it the path to immortality? The baby Eve, if she was ever born, would now be seven years old, as would cloned babies 2 and 3, announced by the sect, who were purportedly born in January 2003. The answer is simple: the Raelian cult is not doing much of anything. The group’s founder and head, the French sports journalist Claude Vorilhon, now makes announcements that pale in comparison to the ones about human cloning, such as the creation of genetically modified peanuts for people with peanut allergies. If the French novelist Michel Houellebecq had not endorsed the group and revived interest in it, no one would even be inquiring into its whereabouts.

For example, what is the Italian gynecologist Severino Antinori – that other mastermind of cloning – doing these days? You may recall that back in 2002 he claimed to have inseminated three women with cloned babies. In late November 2002, Antinori was still confirming the pregnancies and claiming that the first cloned baby would be born during the first week of January 2003. But
Antinori’s cloned children vanished unseen in all the hullabaloo surrounding Vorilhon and his sect, never to resurface. A hunger strike, declared in late January 2003 as a protest against the Italian secretary of health, was Antinori’s last publicized sign of life.

And how about the scientist Panayiotis Zavos at the Andrology Institute of America in Lexington, Kentucky? In the summer of 2004, he had verifiably cloned a human embryo, but he killed it after four days. The whole thing, Zavos said at the time, was just a means of preparing for the eventual implantation of a cloned human embryo into its mother’s uterus. It appears highly unlikely that anything of this sort actually occurred, given the lack of reports of success from the otherwise garrulous Zavos.

More than ten years after Dolly, the cloned sheep, first saw the light of day in a Scottish barn, there is still no evidence of cloned human children anywhere. The vision that some embraced enthusiastically but that most others found dismaying or appalling has gone unrealized so far.

But why does the idea of cloned people really distress us? What is ethically objectionable or reprehensible about cloning? And at what point in the cloning process does it cross the line into immorality?

The artificial reproduction of humans, say the critics of cloning, violates human dignity. Kant famously wrote that man is ‘an end in himself’ and must not be ‘instrumentalized.’ Cloning, it is claimed, instrumentalizes man and degrades human dignity. Let us examine the two categories used by genetic engineers today – ‘reproductive cloning’ and ‘therapeutic cloning’ – to better evaluate this claim.

Reproductive cloning
, as the term is used here, means creating an organism that is largely genetically identical to its original. The cell nucleus (which, like every cell nucleus, contains the complete genetic material) is extracted from a human somatic cell, then an egg cell is selected and enucleated. The nucleus of the somatic cell is now infused into the enucleated egg cell, and the altered egg cell is implanted in the uterus of a surrogate mother. If the experiment
were to succeed in humans, the surrogate mother would bring a child into the world nine months later, and this child’s genetic makeup would match the donor of the somatic cell. To date, this procedure has been used on mice, rats, cattle, goats, pigs, African wildcats, white-tailed deer, bison, horses, dogs, and sheep – including, of course, the world-famous Dolly. But the procedure has not been attempted successfully with humans.

There are very few outspoken advocates of human reproductive cloning. Most countries explicitly outlaw the creation of
genetically
identical humans, though the United Nations has yet to enforce a global ban. (International law has been far laxer when it comes to cloning plants and animals.) Since the 1990s, the uniform multiplication of useful plants and working animals has become routine. But why are there ethical misgivings, both rational and intuitive, that arise in connection with the reproductive cloning of humans, yet not of other animals?

Many people cringe at the thought of human genetic material being copied and transferred to another human being. Thrillers and horror stories are full of nightmarish scenarios involving cloning. It is evidently one of our most deeply held beliefs that each individual is unique. A deliberate violation of this ‘law’ seems sacrilegious to us. When it comes to animals, however, we are less squeamish. We may consider our pet dog, cat, or horse unique, but not our goldfish, and few of us stop to think about whether the pork on our plate came from a unique pig. The feeling of uniqueness is thus reserved for only a narrow segment of the living world.

Our intuitive qualms are supported by several arguments, but they are plausible only if we accept the argument that uniqueness is intrinsically valuable. Cloning a living creature reproductively requires many egg cells, because very few of the thousands of enucleated and restored egg cells actually develop into advanced organisms and result in a healthy living creature. The yield for animals is therefore very small, and most of the egg cells die, as would certainly be the case for humans as well. Even if everything
appeared to go well, the days of a human produced in this way could be numbered. Dolly the sheep made it to the age of six – half the average life expectancy of a normal sheep. Dolly succumbed to progressive lung disease and severe arthritis in February 2003, and her early death raised questions about the sturdiness of her genetic makeup.

Dolly’s premature aging and frailty present a striking but ultimately weak case against the reproductive cloning of humans, as it would imply that if ‘technical’ errors of this kind were eliminated, the production of genetically identical people would be acceptable. And pointing out that numerous egg cells die in an experiment of this sort will matter only to those who believe that a human egg cell already possesses a life with dignity and is unconditionally worthy of protection.

Let us pause here for a moment to turn to the second question raised by cloning, the question of the value and drawbacks of
therapeutic cloning
for man. We need to start by replacing this misleading term. (Even the term ‘reproductive cloning’ is
incorrect
, because cloning is always reproductive, in that it is a reduplicating.) The term ‘therapeutic cloning’ refers to a medical vision of using embryos to grow tissue, or perhaps even organs, to be implanted in diseased individuals. In the process, embryos would be destroyed in the very earliest stage, after just a few cell divisions, and individual cells expanded to produce functional tissue. One day it may be possible to infuse these stem cells directly into a patient’s organ as a curative therapy to replace damaged or destroyed somatic cells.

Even if therapeutic cloning were someday to be realized, which, as we will see later in this discussion, is rather unlikely, it would be not ‘therapeutic,’ but just as ‘reproductive’ as ‘reproductive cloning.’ The difference lies not in the
process
of cloning, but in the
goal
pursued: is the aim to produce genetically identical humans or to serve medical purposes?

Scientists are eager to explore the enormous range of theoretical possibilities for embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are like
fresh snowfall that can assume all conceivable shapes and colors. Genetic engineers call them ‘totipotent’ (having unlimited
capability
). Although theoretically any conceivable tissue can be made from stem cells, there have been few practical successes so far. Another major obstacle is posed by the immune systems into which the foreign stem cell tissue is infused. In animal experiments, the rejection rate is extremely high, as is the probability of cancerous tumors.

So how should cloning be assessed? Let us begin with the argument of human dignity. To what extent is a person not regarded as an ‘intrinsic value’ in cloning, but ‘instrumentalized’ in a morally reprehensible manner? In reproductive cloning, the matter seems straightforward. Ernst Mach’s doubts
notwithstanding
, man has a deep need to regard himself as unique, as an ‘I’ standing apart from others. Our entire self-concept and that of our culture are based in large part on this uniqueness. People who have difficulty referring to themselves as ‘I’ generally suffer from a severe psychological disorder, yet a cloned man would likely have problems experiencing himself as an ‘individual’ (which denotes lack of divisibility), because his very origin results from divisibility. He would be consigned to the status of a copy, unless he never met the person whose genetic makeup had become his and never learned of his own status as a clone.

But why carry out such a dreadful psychological and sociological experiment? While inquisitive researchers interested in the interior and exterior views of a clone stand to benefit, a cloned human would likely suffer severe psychological anguish. This is a clear case of ‘instrumentalization.’ No wonder the great majority of people and nations reject and outlaw reproductive cloning, particularly since there is no apparent benefit at present to offset the enormous disadvantage.

Cloning for research purposes seems different, because the cons we have discussed do not apply. There would be no fully developed humans to sustain psychological damage, but rather preconscious embryos destroyed in the most primitive stage of
development. Still, as we saw in the chapter about abortion, an embryo of this kind is without a doubt a
Homo sapiens
, a human life in the biological sense, and the Embryo Protection Law invokes this argument to ban research on embryos in Germany.

But even the law does not treat embryos like people. Destroying an embryo illegally and killing a born human being are two entirely different matters. The legal penalty when embryos are involved is much less severe. This difference between destroying embryos and murdering people is highlighted when German lawmakers grant researchers permission to conduct research using embryos. The state makes no other exceptions that allow researchers to kill, which shows that the lawmakers do not fully subscribe to their own argument that embryos are absolutely worthy of protection. Thus we find the same contradiction as with the regulation of abortions, which defines embryos as people in both the biological and moral sense, but nonetheless grants permission to kill them at an early stage.

Clearly the issue of the human dignity of embryos is highly complex. If we accept the arguments in the previous chapters – that the value and the dignity of a life are based not on membership in a genus or species, but on whether a living creature has a consciousness and an elementary self-awareness and interests (which is certainly not the case for a human egg cell divided six or eight times) – there is no reason to ascribe human dignity to an embryo. Embryonic stem-cell research instrumentalizes man in a biological but not in a moral sense. Without human dignity, the embryo is a commodity that can be weighed against other commodities. If researchers’ hopes of curing diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s with clone therapy are even remotely realistic, utilitarian criteria can be applied in all good conscience in weighing the nonexistent suffering of destroyed embryos against the immense happiness of hundreds of thousands or even millions of cured patients.

This argument carries a great deal of weight, and it would take solid counterarguments to refute it. The strongest objection to
cloning for research purposes is, interestingly, not a fundamental objection but a utilitarian one. Research cloning over the past ten years has resulted in plenty of sound and fury, yet the successes of the purported gene therapists have been few and far between. Still, the idea of using manipulated cells to replace diseased tissue is sound, and the question is only whether embryonic stem cells are the ideal solution.

Stem cells are not limited to embryos. Our bone marrow, liver, brain, pancreas, and skin all contain stem cells, which scientists call ‘adult’ stem cells. Adult stem cells are versatile (‘pluripotent’) and quite capable of development. Throughout the course of our lives, they continue to form new specialized cells for our body. In a petri dish, they can mature into many kinds of cell tissues. But in contrast to embryonic stem cells, there are limits. A stem cell from the brain can develop into all types of neuronal nervous tissue, but most likely not into a liver cell. Still, there may be exceptions in stem cells from amniotic fluid, from umbilical cord blood, and from deciduous teeth.

The immense advantage of adult stem cells over embryonic stem cells is clear. If biological and chemical stimulation could be used to cultivate stem cells from my own brain to form new brain tissue and to reimplant it in my brain in the place of diseased tissue, my immune system would be unlikely to reject it, and there would be no apparent elevated risks of cancer associated with the procedure. Since the 1960s, doctors have been using stem cells from the bone marrow that help to form blood in treating leukemia and lymphomas. There have been numerous clinical studies on therapy of cardiac and vascular disease with adult stem cells. Successes in clinical studies are emerging for patients suffering from paralysis and Parkinson’s disease and those recovering from heart attacks. Rats with brain tumors are being treated quite successfully with injections of adult stem cells.

Research with adult stem cells appears promising. If the often heralded breakthrough in curing Parkinson’s disease succeeds in the next couple of decades, more can be expected from stem-cell
research with adult cells than with embryonic cells. But often research projects in both areas wind up competing fiercely for public and private research funding. Supporting embryonic
stem-cell
research inevitably means not investing the same money in the more fruitful field of adult stem-cell research, which offers not only the far more realistic chance of a cure but also a path that is socially unproblematic. Adult stem cells can be harvested easily, whereas embryonic stem cells require human egg cells, usually as the result of artificial insemination. But the supply is limited. Egg donations may one day go commercial, with women from developing countries providing the supplies – and all the ethical problems that entails.