By Amanda Onion
ABC News
 | | Some
scientists believe human embryos could hold medical cures, especially if they're
able to clone them. |
Shauna
Anderson, a 28-year-old suffering from acute kidney failure, thinks cloning could
save her life.
"I do not support [reproductive cloning], but I feel it
is their right," Anderson said in an e-mail to ABCNEWS.com. "And it could be my
cure."
Although some feel cloning human tissue and cloning entire people
are morally worlds apart, the technology for both heavily overlaps. And groups
like the Human Cloning Foundation, which promotes human cloning for all purposes,
have been more than willing to highlight people like Anderson as examples of those
who could potentially benefit from the technology.
But given the fears
of creating mutant babies, some biotechnology researchers believe the technology
should be limited to medical research. And they aren't as pleased to be associated
with those who promote cloning to create entire humans.
Ethicists, meanwhile,
challenge both groups.
Backlash by Association?
When a veteran
reproductive expert and University of Kentucky professor recently announced that
he and an Italian colleague plan to clone a person in 18 months, some researchers
began to worry medically important benefits of cloning could be sacrificed in
a legal and public backlash. The declaration prompted an immediate reaction from
the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a biotech industry group based in Washington,
which sent a letter to President Bush expressing its concern.
"We think
it's unethical and inappropriate and dangerous to clone human beings at this point,"
explains Michael Warner, a bioethics counsel for the Biotechnology Industry Organization.
"But
the use of cloning technology has the potential to be enormously beneficial and
should not be lost," he says.
Right now human cloning is not illegal in
the United States. An order signed by former President Clinton calls the practice
"immoral," and no federal funds may be used in any human cloning research. The
Food and Drug Administration also officially oversees any U.S.-based efforts to
clone human material.
Still, most agree legislation won't stop human cloning
from happening. As Kentucky fertility specialist Panos Zavos told ABCNEWS: "If
we don't do it, somebody else will do it and they'll do it soon and probably in
a very irresponsible way."
A Cloned Self-Repair Kit
The
National Institutes of Health recently released guidelines allowing government
researchers to extract stem cells from discarded embryos provided by private researchers.
Stem cells are young, adaptable cells that evolve to form every part of the body.
Some
are hopeful that doctors could someday perform "therapeutic cloning" by extracting
a person's cells, cloning those cells to create an embryo of identical genetic
material, and then using the embryo's stem cells to grow whatever tissue the patient
may need, for example skin, liver or brain tissue.
Since the clusters
of cells would be genetically identical to the patient, there would be no risk
the patient's body would reject the new tissue. The embryo would then be destroyed
in a matter of days.
Bioethicist Margaret Somerville argues cloning and
then terminating young embryos even for the most noble medical cures is immoral.
"People argue it's for the larger good, but it's like saying you can kill
a person and take their organs to save the lives of 30 others," says Somerville,
founder of the McGill Center for Medicine, Ethics and Law in Montreal. "That's
unacceptable."
And John Gearhart, a stem cell researcher at Johns Hopkins
University, believes the practice is so controversial it's unlikely federal funds
will ever be made available in the United States.
"Therapeutic cloning
is human cloning; the only difference is you're not transferring the embryos back
into a human uterus," he says.
The practice is funded in Great Britain.
Recent legislation in that country will allow researchers to clone embryos and
then use the young cells for research into therapeutic cloning. Under the legislation,
scientists must destroy the cloned embryos after 14 days.
Immoral Practice?
Spokesmen
for President Bush have emphasized the new administration considers both cloning
and stem cell research unethical and may reverse the release of federal funding
for any stem cell research.
Stem cell research and therapeutic cloning
could seem even more unacceptable, says Gearhart, should the first attempts at
human cloning go badly.
That's why he believes it's more likely U.S. researchers
will find other ways of generating healthy, replacement tissue that a patient's
body won't reject. For example, adults carry stem cells in their bone marrow that
could possibly serve the same function of an embryo's young cells in generating
replacement tissue.
"It may mean taking adult cells directly from the patient
and reprogramming them rather than taking a nucleus and putting it into a cell
[nuclear transfer cloning] and then reprogramming them," Gearhart says.
Anderson
is also skeptical therapeutic cloning might be able to provide her with healthy
kidney tissue in time, but she doesn't know where else to turn. Meanwhile, she
reports her health is deteriorating rapidly because her body is rejecting a kidney
donated by her mother in 1993. She says the only thing now keeping her alive is
dialysis, a procedure that uses a machine to do the work of a poorly functioning
kidney.
As she wrote, "I do not bank on cloning to save me, but I see no
other way to save myself." |
