BY THE AUTHOR.
In what could be claimed a revolutionary advancement in the ever growing field of genetic engineering, a French scientist has claimed that world’s first human clone has been born. The baby girl was reportedly born on 26th December, 2002. The French scientist, Brigitte Boisselier, who undertook this great task is the president of the Bahamas-based cloning company Clonaid, which was formed in 1997 by the Raelian cult, which believes people are clones of aliens. However, the claims have as yet not been verified.
The history of cloning has so far been great, with scientists so far succeeding in cloning sheep, mice, cows, pigs, goats and cats. But if this claim is verified it will be the first human clone to be born. Clonaid claims a second baby was born subsequently in early January in the Netherlands, and that three more are due by the end of January. Clonaid says the planned DNA tests have been delayed in order to protect the parents’ identities. This follows a Florida lawyer asking a state court to appoint a legal guardian for the baby girl, a process that could force the identification of those involved in the cloning. It is said that tests might instead be performed on the second child as perhaps the second child will be more accessible because it is in Europe and the country in which he or she will be born may be less sensitive.
Since much has been talked about it, the real question is what is cloning and how is it done, and what could be its various implications? Cloning is a scientific technique to create genetically identical molecules, cells or organisms. There are basically two types of cloning – therapeutic and reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning is the production of cloned cells to produce tissues and/or organs, mainly to improve health care. Reproductive cloning represents a new reproduction technique by which life can be given to an identical twin of the original cell donor. Cloning produces a new individual using only one person’s DNA. Human cloning for reproductive purposes is banned in several countries. The United States has no specific law against human cloning. However, the US Food and Drug Administration, which regulates human experiments, forbids human cloning without prior permission. The die-hard critics of cloning argue that it will kill what is called the “Identity” of an individual. Cult leaders campaigning for cloning argue otherwise. It is an ethical debate that could go back and forth forever.
Lawyer Bernard Siegal, whose petition alleges that if the child is cloned it “is at risk of having permanent genetic defects, imperfections and mutations”, says he filed his petition to the Fort Lauderdale court because, if true, the cloned baby was an “abused child that was being exploited by Clonaid” and needed court protection. So, finally, the court is after Clonaid. A Florida court has ordered the company to reveal the whereabouts of the baby girl and mother. The court has asked Clonaid’s vice-president, Thomas Kaenzig, to appear before it on January 22, failing which he could be held for contempt of court. The action followed a lawsuit filed by an attorney, asking the state to appoint a guardian for the supposedly cloned child.
The Roman Catholic Church and the Islamic clergy across the world have vowed to fight the very idea tooth and nail, accusing the practice of being unnatural and without principles. The development has triggered off a variety of questions ranging from moral to ethical to legal, like would it be ethical to clone a human without a brain for use in organ transplants? Or would it be ethical to use clones for scientific research?
These questions raise issues that both the scientific community and the public must address if the technology for cloning humans becomes feasible. More importantly, we must first decide where the boundaries for the “practice” of science and the “implications” of science lie.
Cloning of embryos has been used in mice experiments since the late 1970s and in animal breeding since the late 1980s. For many years we have cloned plants for food production and gardening. We’ve also used genetic engineering techniques on livestock. In some ways, human cloning represents the next logical step in this process. Do the benefits outweigh the risks? We could have improved organ transplants without body rejection, new treatments for a variety of illnesses, and a host of other improvements to the human condition. Conversely, we could also have parents attempting to produce “perfect” genetic offspring, legal implications from the status of clones, etc. However, research into the cloning of human embryos has been restricted in the United States and in some other countries. Pro-life groups, which oppose free access to abortion, have had considerable political power. They were able to have all human embryo research banned by the Reagan and Bush presidencies during most of the 1980s and into the early 1990s. During the first few days of President Clinton’s presidency, the ban on public funding of human embryo and foetal research was lifted.
While many experts expressed doubts about the claim, Clonaid said that independent gene testing would prove the claim about Eve in the coming days. This promise was withdrawn after a lawsuit was begun in the U.S. to make Eve a ward of court on the basis that the “mother” was the baby girl’s twin sister and thus the “mother” had no legal parental rights, even though she had just given birth to her own twin. A similar court case was launched in the Netherlands after reports that the second birth was to a Dutch lesbian. Clonaid say that the “parents” are afraid their cloned babies will be seized and taken away from them permanently. The claims could be true given the pace of human cloning research and the commitment to the project. Even if not, the momentum for human cloning is so great, the global race so intense, that we are likely to see clones born quite soon elsewhere – unfortunately – with huge physical and emotional risks to the babies created.
President George Bush is said to be deeply troubled by the news and wants Congress to ban attempts to clone human beings. The president believes, like most Americans, that human cloning is deeply troubling and he strongly supports legislation banning it. Chairman of the U.S. President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass, said that the practice was unethical and should be outlawed. Although the House of Representatives passed a bill to ban all cloning last year, the bill has not passed through the Senate and has not become law.
Members of some religious groups, particularly Evangelical Christianity and Roman Catholicism, believe that a soul enters the body at the instant of conception, and that the fertilized ovum is in fact a human person with full human rights. Dividing that “baby” in half during an embryo cloning procedure would interfere with God’s intent. It is also human experimentation on live persons. The many cloned zygotes that died after a few cell divisions would be lost human beings; their loss is considered as serious as the death of a newborn baby.
These same conservative Christians would probably also be distressed at the use of cloning to weed out genetically defective fertilized ova in therapeutic cloning procedures. The procedure would result in the killing of one of the clones during the genetic testing. Since they regard each of the clones as separate human beings, this would be murder.
Others have questioned whether a cloned embryo will have a soul. A soul is weightless, colorless, odorless, has never been detected by any measurement and may not exist. But it is a concern to some believers. Fortunately, embryo cloning is similar to the natural processes that generate identical twins. And, with the exception of the ancient Hawaiians, nobody questions whether both twins have souls.
Certain legal developments with regards to cloning may be summarized as follows:
• The U.S. National Bioethics Advisory Commission recommended in 1997 that: no federal funds be used for creating embryos as a source for stem cells; stem cell research use only material harvested from aborted fetuses or from embryos left over after infertility treatments.
• The U.S. National Institutes of Health drafted a set of guidelines in 1999 that would allow federal funding of stem cell research only using cells derived from aborted fetuses or from embryos left over after infertility treatments; would not allow federal funding for research in methods of extracting stem cells from embryos; and imposed no limitations on private research, not funded by the government.
Therapeutic cloning is the production of cloned cells to produce tissues and/or organs, mainly to improve health care. The die-hard critics of cloning argue that it will kill what is called the “Identity” of an individual.
It has been seen that the earlier animals which came into life through cloning have displayed defects later in life and scientists fear the same could happen with cloned humans. However, in spite of knowing this reality scientists remain intent on giving life to what may very well be genetically weak babies who will suffer a short life full of ailments. The truth at the moment is we do not understand what we are doing, which will undoubtedly result in the sufferings outweighing the benefits, at first. History will also record sympathy and compassion for Eve because the newborn Eve, innocent of all such motives, is ultimately the one who will pay their price.
The author is a lawyer in U.S.A.