Clone the Truth #12

I think I will answer with this quote from James Sherley, Ph.D. associate professor of biological engineering at MIT because he said it better than I ever could:

"Given that embryos are human beings, they have a right to self and a right to life. Exploiting their parts (ie, cells) or killing them for research is moral trespass that society should not allow. Even if the research might, and let’s be clear, might benefit others, this trespass is not justified."

Rayliyn,

Thank-you for your excellent question.

First and foremost, it is unethical to create a human life, cloned or otherwise to be exploited for research or therapeutic purposes. But as I am sure you do not share my view that cloned embryos are human life, I will set religious and metaphysical arguments aside and give you some other practical reasons why I, and many others, oppose SCNT and do not want state or federal tax-payer money to fund this research:

1. Cloning for therapeutic purposes will inevitably lead to reproductive cloning or cloning to produce children. Most of us can agree that reproductive cloning is highly unethical because of the possible genetic defects that arise form the SCNT process. There are many on both sides of the issue that believe it is absurd to pursue therapeutic cloning thinking that reproductive cloning will not result. Gregory Pence is a

SCNT advocate who, in his book Cloning After Dolly : Who's Still Afraid?, wrote, "Scientists are naive to think they can ban reproductive cloning and go ahead studying embryonic [therapeutic] cloning."

Pence is correct. SCNT is the same in both therapeutic and reproductive cloning. The only difference is whether the cloned embryo is implanted. The implantation of cloned embryos would be impossible to prevent. President Bush also agrees. He stated, "Anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies."

Sen. Mary Landrieu, Democrat from Louisiana concurs and I think she said it best, "Cloning is cloning. That is why it should all be illegal."

2. It is unlikely that it will be only SCNT embryos (or "balls of cells" as some people like to call them) that are destroyed for stem cell research. Some SCNT proponents question why the cloned embryos should be destroyed at the blastocyst stage (14 days after nuclear transfer). William Saletan in his article "Organ Factory" on Slate.com suggests research into implanting cloned embryos into natural or artificial wombs then gestating them to the fetal stage and aborting them for cells which are already differentiated into the desired tissue. He writes, "But if the goal is tissue, clones aren't less useful after 14 days. They're more useful, precisely because they're differentiating into the cell types that patients need. Why stop research at 14 days? Once you say we can do this much of it, what's the difference?" Saletan ends his piece with this thought:

"You can tell yourself what we already tell ourselves about unwanted in vitro embryos: They're doomed anyway. Patients' lives are at stake. We can't let personal morality get in the way of science. We can't wait. But that's the funny thing: We are waiting. Every day that we don't grow embryos beyond two weeks for their tissue, we're waiting. I wonder why."

ReNeuron, a UK company, is already researching the use of aborted fetal tissue as a source of stem cells. If SCNT in humans becomes a reality, they could create their own cloned fetuses with out the need to wait for the donation of aborted fetuses.

In fact New Jersey law, allows for the implantation of cloned embryos and allows them to be gestated for 9 months. The law requires that such a cloned fetus must be destroyed for research purposes before birth. So it is not out of the realm of possibility that such practices would result in "fetal farming" the creation of cloned embryos that are implanted, allowed to gestate and then aborted and harvested for research or therapeutic purposes. [Source: Consumer's Guide to the Brave New World by Wesley J. Smith]

I think the slippery slope here is pretty apparent.

3. SCNT needs eggs, lots of them. Egg donation is an invasive procedure that has some potentially serious side effects, including death. SCNT creates a demand for eggs, which puts women at risk of exploitation. Conservatives and liberals alike are opposed to SCNT for this reason alone. We need only to look at the pressure applied to women researchers in Dr. Hwang’s lab in South Korea to understand that such a demand for human eggs has dire implications. The proposed solutions to the egg dilemma are to take eggs from aborted fetuses, which creates a market for aborted girl babies, or use animal eggs, like those from cows or rabbits. I am not the only one that finds these alternatives unacceptable not only for ethical reasons but for patient safety as well.

The problem of the shortage of eggs makes SCNT an expensive proposition if used therapeutically. I would take millions of eggs to treat just the diabetics in the U.S. with "patient-specific" embryonic stem cells created with SCNT. Researchers have trouble getting eggs for research let alone enough to treat millions of patients. On average women receives $2000-$4000 for less than a dozen eggs. And to date it takes hundreds of eggs to successfully create one animal clone with SCNT. The cost alone is prohibitive, so SCNT will probably never become a routine treatment, unless you have money.

4. Even if researchers could overcome the egg issue and successfully create a cloned embryo with SCNT and get the embryonic stem cells to differentiate properly and not cause tumors in the patient, there still is a possibility of rejection. Yes, rejection. It is a widespread misconception that SCNT creates an embryo that is an "exact genetic" copy of the patient. That is untrue. There is mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in the mitochondria of the egg that is left behind when the nucleus is removed. When the somatic cell nucleus of the patient is inserted, a hybrid embryo is formed. It has the 46 chromosomes of the patient but the mtDNA of the woman who donated the egg. Because mtDNA does code for some proteins on the surface of the cell, there is the possibility that the mtDNA from the egg donor may cause rejection. David Prentice, in his book, Stem Cells and Cloning, writes, “More importantly, for possible transplants, even though there are only 13 genes in human mitochondria, some of the proteins made from these genes do end up on the surface of the cell, where there is the possibility that they could trigger an immune response.” The only case where this would not be a possibility is if a woman donated her own eggs for the SCNT process.

For all of the above reasons, I oppose SCNT. I instead would like to see money and effort put into discovering how to reprogram a patient's own adult stem cell back to a pluripotent state which would eliminate the need for cloning, eggs and would be the best way to ensure that rejection doesn't occur. Obviously, this mechanism has not yet been discovered, but then again SCNT in humans has also been unsuccessful to date.

I hope that answers some of your questions.

Rebecca