The arguments for cloning
The National Bioethics Advisory Commission made two serious efforts to collect arguments in favor of cloning, in order to understand the benefits of cloning. First, at their meeting on March 14, 1997, the NBAC invited two speakers to outline the benefits of cloning. And second, a member of the commission polled scientific societies to find researchers who had projects that would be helped by human cloning; the results were reported at the May 2, 1997 meeting. The two efforts produced limited results.
March 14: Arguments in favor of cloning
John Robertson, who has written extensively about “assisted reproductive technology,” offered three arguments:
1. Cloning is an extension of current accepted practices.
2. Cloning could be used as an aid in in vitro fertilization (IVF).
3. Cloning could be used for genetic selection or eugenic purposes.
Ruth Macklin said she could think of no benefits from cloning.
Testifying before the NBAC, John Robertson offered the following arguments.
First, cloning is similar to other “reproductive and genetic selection practices” currently in use, and should therefore be permitted if they are permitted.
Second, according to Robertson, there are situations in which human cloning would be beneficial as an aid to in vitro fertilization, and for what he called “eugenic cloning.” He said:
“Consider couples going through IVF. [There are] many reasons why they might choose to clone embryos either by blastomere separation, or by nuclear transfer. One would be to obtain enough embryos to achieve pregnancy and offspring. If a woman produced only one or two eggs or one or two embryos, it might be difficult for that couple to have a family. Splitting the embryos or cloning them by nuclear transfer would enable them to overcome that problem. Or they may want to do that to avoid having to go through a second IVF cycle which not only is very costly but is onerous for the woman involved, including hormonal stimulation and egg retrieval. A third [reason] would be to have a back up supply of embryos from which tissue or organs could be obtained if a tragedy befell a first child. Obviously in that scenario the cloned embryos could be transferred to the uterus at the same time leading to simultaneously born intended twins or they could be transferred at later points in time.
“Now an important point, indeed a crucial point, about cloning as part of IVF is that such activities would appear to fall within the fundamental freedom of married couples, including infertile married couples to have biologically related offspring. If the ability to clone an embryo and transfer it to the uterus is essential in determining whether that couple will reproduce, then cloning should receive the same legal respect and protection that other means of noncoital reproductionreceive.”
Besides as an aid to IVF, Robertson offered a second situation in which human cloning would be beneficial. He said:
“Let me move on to a second reason why cloning might prove beneficial. Here it is not enhancing fertility per se or simply obtaining a child for rearing but it could occur. It is an attempt to produce a child that has a healthy genome. You might call this eugenic cloning. That sort of has a bad ring, but I think that is a proper way to characterize it. . .
“The case I have in mind, a case for cloning for genetic selection or eugenic purposes, is closely related to current practices, would be the couple who both lack gametes. The wife has a functioning uterus and would like to gestate and thus they desire an embryo donation. Embryo donation is now an accepted part of ART [artificial or assisted reproductive technology] practice, but instead of having to go around and find an embryo at random left over from IVF treatment of another couple which has not been adequately assessed for disease or what the outcome would be, they might decide that the best alternative would be to create an embryo that replicates the DNA that already exists.
“It could be a living person. It could be a living child. It could be someone who has passed away. The intent here would be to screen out the possible genomes they might get. Screen out those so they would end up with a healthy one and, of course, the purpose here would be to have a healthy offspring that they both would rear themselves. . .
“The bottom line here is that if a loving family will rear the child it is difficult to see why cloning through genetic selection, any more than cloning for an answer to infertility, is per se unacceptable. As I have said we engage in many forms of genetic selection already, most of which are designed to make sure that a child will be healthy and have good chances in life. So-called eugenic cloning is but another form of genetic selection and it should not be banned on that ground alone.”
These were all the benefits that Robertson offered for cloning. There was a third part to his presentation, responding to some of the criticisms of cloning.
Response to Robertson
1. Aid to IVF In his testimony before the NBAC, Robertson said: “Now an important point, indeed a crucial point, about cloning as part of IVF is that such activities would appear to fall within the fundamental freedom of married couples, including infertile married couples to have biologically related offspring.” However, it is noteworthy that just a few years earlier, in Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), he wrote that cloning goes “far beyond what is essential to assure a normal, healthy birth. If a couple’s wish to clone is to be respected, it must find its protection elsewhere than under the canopy of reproductive freedom.” Clearly, Robertson’s notion of reproductive liberty is unstable, subject to rapid changes; he opposed a right to cloning only as long as the practice seemed distant; as soon as the practice seemed feasible, Robertson discovered a newly expanded right.
2. Eugenic cloning
Robertson is not alone is describing developments in genetics as eugenics. Nor is he alone in his judgment that the resurgence of eugenics is benign. The second meeting of the NBAC took place during the III World Congress on Bioethics in San Francisco (November 20-25, 1996). During that congress, the presidents of the two sponsoring organizations (Daniel Wikler, Ph.D., president of the International Association of Bioethics and Dan Brock, Ph.D., president of the American Association of Bioethics), announced that they were cooperating on a new book about the resurgence of a benign eugenics. George Annas, M.D., Ph.D., spoke at the Holocaust Museum in Washington during a series of symposia in 1996 on the Nuremberg trials, and said that what is happening today in genetics is indeed eugenics. He made a distinction between eugenics today and eugenics in Nazi Germany: the Nazi eugenics program was run by the state and aimed for the perfect society, while modern eugenics is decentralized and aims for the perfect child. Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., has also spoken about the current resurgence of eugenics, without expressing alarm at the development.
There are a number of problems in the assumption that Robertson and others make that the resurgence of eugenics is “benign.” Perhaps the easiest criticism to understand involves a comparison of eugenics at home and abroad. The United States government has not offered any serious criticism of the Chinese population control program. In fact, since 1975 or earlier, the American government has been committed to population control throughout the developing world. National Security Study Memorandum 200, a statement of American policy, described population growth in Africa as a threat to our national security, and gave the Agency for International Development responsibility for bringing down African birth rates. It is not intellectually honest to describe domestic developments in genetics without any reference to population control abroad. The old slogan of the eugenics movement “more from the fit, less from the unfit” remains an apt description of current projects.
But eugenics within the United States is not entirely benign either. At the May 2, 1997 meeting of the NBAC, there was testimony from Mary Lyman Jackson, the co-founder and president of Exodus Youth Services, Inc., an ecumenical Catholic ministry to thousands of at-risk children and families on the streets of our nation’s capital. Mrs. Jackson said:
“Exodus reaches out to homeless, run-away, latchkey, and refugee children who have slipped through the cracks of the social service network of Washington, D.C. Exodus’s mission is based on developing the principles of human dignity, personal responsibility, morality, and love of neighbor with the poorest of the poor.
“I live in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in a nice suburban community, but spend a lot of time on the streets in Washington. I am very conscious of the way the differences between these two communities are developing, and it worries me. I hear people talking about life in the suburbs in ways that are very different than from life in the streets. And it is the differences that concern me. I do not know of anyone in the suburbs who has birth control pushed on them, but my girls in the inner-city do. They tell me a different story. And I do not know of anyone in the city who expects to get any benefit from genetic engineering.”
Within the United States, the cutting edge of reproductive technology means different things in different places. Among the rich, it means in vitro fertilization and assisted reproduction. Among the poor, it means Norplant and Depo-Provera. “More from the fit, less from the unfit.”
Robertson himself has written extensively about Norplant and forced contraception. He concludes that there are people who are reproducing irresponsibly, and that the state does have a role in discouraging such activity, although he opposes coercive measures.
Robertson is right that eugenic cloning “has a bad ring.”
Second speaker for cloning
Ruth Macklin was also invited to the NBAC meeting on March 14, 1997, to describe the benefits of cloning. She said bluntly:
“Having been invited to speak on the possible benefits of cloning I fear that I shall disappoint the commission. My inability to identify such benefits stems partly from my ignorance of the relevant scientific background. Not being a scientist I cannot project the possible benefits, whereas a knowledgeable scientist in this area could probably do so.”
Speaking as a non-scientist, she said that there might be “another reason for my inability to identify the benefits of cloning. There may not be any substantial societal benefits. A further complication is that what I consider benefits to individuals in certain circumstances others construe as harms.”
Unable to specify any benefits of cloning, she set out to answer the critics of human cloning, saying at the end:
“One last point. It is, as many commentators note, important to respect and preserve human dignity. But these commentators owe us a more precise account of just what constitutes a violation of human dignity if no individuals are harmed and no one’s rights are violated. Dignity is a fuzzy concept and appeals to dignity are often used to substitute for empirical evidence that is lacking or sound arguments that cannot be mustered.
“If I cannot point to any great benefits likely to result from cloning neither do I foresee any probable great harms provided that a structure of regulation and oversight is in place. If objectors to cloning can identify no greater harm than a supposed affront to the dignity of the human species, that is a flimsy basis on which to erect barriers to scientific research and its applications.”
Response to Ruth Macklin
Macklin offered no benefits from human cloning, and so there is no need to respond to that. Her remarks responding to the opponents of cloning, though, raise some very interesting issues. Her remark about “dignity” was noteworthy. The issue of “dignity” is discussed on p. 47.
May 2, 1997 summary of responses from scientific associations
The key question about the disadvantages of a ban on human cloning is obvious: What scientific research would be stopped by a ban on human cloning? The answer to this key argument for cloning is: none.
During the deliberations of the President’s National Bioethics Advisory Commission, Dr. Carol Greider (NBAC member) polled about 70 scientific associations that are involved in various kinds of research that could possibly be connected with an interest in human cloning, asking them if they were doing research that would be hurt by a ban on human cloning.
According to responses that Dr. Greider received, researchers did indeed see various ways that they could use human cloning, in basic research and in technology. In basic research, human cloning could “revolutionize and advance the understanding of basic developmental biology by addressing certain areas that may not be addressable by other techniques. One [example] is addressing how cells become different from each other during the development of an organism from an egg to an adult. Another is confirming that genetic material of adult cells is intact and potentially totipotent.”
Also, human cloning experiments could advance “knowledge of the fundamental processes such as how genes control human development and how oocytes can reprogram adult nuclei.”
In the area of technology, Dr. Greider’s report said, “it was stated that this technology is fundamental to developing new, more effective cell-based therapies for human genetic and degenerative diseases.
The examples given here are: It could be used to figure out new ways for repair and regeneration of human tissues, and it may be a great way to eliminate graft rejections for people who need organs or also the problem of the scarcity of donor material. And an example of the regeneration that was given was interesting an idea of regenerating nerve cells or brain cells for the treatment of Alzheimer’s.”
In a discussion of the survey, Dr. Bernard Lo (NBAC member) pressed for a summary of the responses, and for conclusions about ongoing research that would be affected by a ban. First he distinguished between (1) cloning a baby [nuclear transfer, then implantation in the uterus, etc.] and (2) cloning for research purposes [nuclear transfer, but no implantation]. The following exchange took place:
Dr. Bernard Lo: I have a couple questions. . . Let me state them as kind of hypothesis. One is that scientifically it would be inappropriate to attempt to clone a human being, baby production, at this time, because we just don’t know what the risks are, and the information we have from the Dolly experiments suggest the risks may be quite high. . . . My understanding is that that is virtually a unanimous opinion in the scientific community.
Dr. Greider: I would say an overwhelming opinion. I wouldn’t say unanimous.
Dr. Lo: Okay, overwhelming. Good. And then a second issue has to do with cloning in the sense of using adult somatic cells for nuclear transfer well, doing really pre-implantation embryo research with no intent to transfer [to a mother’s uterus]. Is there agreement among the scientific community that that work could proceed without use of human cells, using animal cells, and sort of reap, for the foreseeable future, the sort of the basic science insights into cell biology and development? Is there any compelling reason now, if one’s ultimate goal were either basic science or sort of cellular level therapeutics and not baby-making, to do research with human cloning in a sense of non-implantation embryo research? . . . [I]s there anyone who has a compelling reason to say, to answer this vital scientific question, we have to now turn to human [cloning]?
Dr. Greider: That was striking in that the answer was no. Nobody came forward and said that we really need to do this now.
Dr. David Cox (NBAC member) intervened to add that although no one described any current research that would be affected by a ban, still “everyone came forward loud and clear, saying, But don’t put restrictions on it, because we haven’t thought about this very much.'”
The issue of nuclear transfer without implantation (clone and kill) is discussed elsewhere, on p. 55.