THE AMOUNT of promise human cloning holds for the future of humanity is exceeded only by the immense confusion and misleading rhetoric that surrounds it. President Bush, a regular supplier of rhetoric and a faithful contributor to confusion, urged senators on April 10 to support a bill that seeks to ban all human cloning from our country. If this bill passes a Senate floor vote, not only will it drive the best and brightest American research scientists out of the country, it also will put our national health care system in danger of lagging behind those of even the smallest industrialized nations around the globe.
There are few who do not have intense opinions on the issue of human cloning, and even fewer who actually understand it. The word "cloning" conjures up a wide spectrum of images depending upon the preconceptions of the people who hear it. But before deciding whether or not the practice should be unilaterally banned from our nation and its practitioners made into criminals, it is vital that we have at least a basic idea of what we're talking about.
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There are two types of cloning which must be discerned right at the start of the debate. Cloning for reproductive purposes involves the eventual creation of a self-sufficient human being that is genetically identical to its parent. It brought about Dolly the sheep and, while it may be what the majority of people think of when they consider cloning, it has never been successfully implemented with a human being - and it most likely will not be in the near future. An overwhelming number of scientists and ethicists oppose reproductive cloning based not only on traditional moral grounds but also on the high probability of negative abnormalities and birth defects among cloned human children. As the consensus says, such cloning should be forbidden in its current state of imperfection.
But there is no such consensus on a second type of cloning, which is employed for therapeutic use without the intention of creating full-fledged human beings. It is a technology with the potential to provide cures for a host of horrible illnesses including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes and heart disease. It carries with it more potential benefit to humanity than any single medical technology ever has before.
Rather than creating a new full-fledged human being, therapeutic cloning is used to create a cloned embryo by inserting a donor's DNA into a hollowed-out egg. After the modified embryo has been developing for four to seven days, it contains roughly 100 undifferentiated cells, commonly referred to as stem cells. These cells each have the potential to morph into any type of cell in the body, from neurons to heart tissue.
By destroying the embryo at this point and extracting these stem cells, many scientists think that the stem cells can be manipulated to form a number of different cells that then can be reinserted into the original donor's body wherever he might need them. The process could be used to replace damaged tissue in the heart, spinal cord, lungs, liver or any number of other vital places (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/files/statfiles/document-104.pdf).
Those who have a basic understanding of therapeutic cloning and still oppose it do so based on what they claim is their respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life. They argue that human life is sacred, even when it is seven days old or less, and that to create it for the sole purpose of destroying it and harvesting its stem cells is morally wrong. Some go so far as to compare the practice to murder.
But a seven-day-old embryo possesses none of the vital characteristics of human life that distinguish it from other non-human forms of life. It has no autonomy, no emotional interdependency, not even the capacity for the simplest thought or impulse. At best, it simply is alive and has the potential to one day possess the valued qualities of a human being.
Simply being alive does not qualify a creature's life as sacred. Plants and animals are alive, yet we slaughter and devour millions of them daily. It is not merely the possession of life but rather the characteristics of a creature's life that make it sacred.
Those who attribute an embryo's sanctity to its potential for full human life must accept the consequences of labeling potentiality as sacred. Following their logic, contraceptives must be horribly immoral because they destroy the potential of sperm meeting egg, thereby eradicating a future human life.
Some may say that it is not mere potential but rather the actual moment an embryo begins to grow that makes it a sacred human life. However, studies suggest that natural processes destroy as many as 60 percent of all normally fertilized eggs before their mothers even know they exist. For those who view all embryos as sacred human lives, then, there is a massive public health crisis to be dealt with. Millions of precious children's lives are being brutally destroyed each year by the harsh and amoral menstrual cycle. Perhaps a search and rescue effort is in order.
But without the problematic acceptance of the sanctity of a few-day-old embryo's life, there is no moral ground on which to prohibit therapeutic cloning research from proceeding. Forbidding a technology that promises to alleviate the intense suffering of millions is morally reprehensible and an affront to both human happiness and dignity. And it's just the sort of thing the boys in Washington are apt to do if someone doesn't knock some sense into them.
(Anthony Dick is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.)
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