Editorial: Cloning humans a path to nightmare

Medicine is normally an ultra-cautious science, as it ought to be since it deals with the human body. The most promising drugs and techniques undergo years of graduated trials before they gain guarded acceptance, and heaven help a laboratory or a newspaper that celebrates a promising discovery before the exhaustive procedure is complete. So why is the world powerless to stop a couple of rogue research clinics trying their hand at human reproductive cloning?

Doctors the world over seem to be united in their condemnation of the plans of an Italian fertility specialist, Dr Severino Antinori, and his American partner, Zavos Panos, and the reason is easy to understand. The science of cloning is nowhere near at the level of success it would need in order to be applied to human reproduction, if indeed it ever should be.

The animals that have been produced by cloning in recent years are the result in each case of hundreds of failures. The Roslyn Institute, which produced Dolly the sheep, says about 1 per cent of cloned embryos survive to birth. Many die late in gestation and of those that are born many die soon after. Dolly was the first cloned animal and it may yet prove that her biological age is the same as her parent.

Truly, this science is still in the nightmare stage. To be offering it to 200 women, as Dr Antinori says he is ready to do, can only be described as foolhardy and callous. The likelihood of deformities and other defects are so great that the British fertility scientist, Lord Robert Winston, here for the Knowledge Wave Conference, doubted that any doctor would run the risk. It can only be hoped that Dr Antinori and his partner do not really want to be remembered one day for having created a living tragedy.

But at least the furore caused by his comments to the United States National Academy of Sciences this week has reminded the world that genetic science is developing at such a pace that some sort of agreed protocols are becoming urgent. In the absence of sound rules, human genetic experimentation is all too likely to see a free-for-all in the private sector and excessive prohibitions in the public realm. That is exactly what seems to be happening in the US where the Federal Government has decided not to allow public funds to be used for stem cell research.

The stem cells of human embryos are those awaiting genetic instructions to turn into one of the cell types that make up a body. They can possibly be programmed to grow into complete organs suitable for transplant. The therapeutic potential of that application of cloning is probably sufficiently beneficial not to be banned on the grounds that embryos will be aborted in the cause.

The therapeutic possibilities of some transgenic techniques seem vastly more valuable than those of reproductive cloning. Even if one day such cloning can be done with a reasonable rate of success, would it be desirable? A clone would be a genetic replica of its father, lacking the cross fertilisation that is the essence of biological individuality. A cloned child may be less like its father than, say, identical twins are alike, because the influences of upbringing and the surrounding environment will be different from one generation to the next. But the clinical replication of a human being raises fears that science cannot settle.

It is difficult enough to deal with the human implications of genetic modification without considering the affront to nature that cloning presents. Transgenic techniques, by which scientists to add or subtract a gene from an naturally fertilised embryo, are still "inefficient", according to Lord Winston at a lecture on Monday. He outlined how he thinks they might develop a better success rate. If it can be done, the temptation to eliminate disease and enhance the human body may be irresistible.

It is time an international agency was nominated to consider some sensible, practical and binding rules for human genetic experiments, if only to let our human dignity find its bearings. Somewhere between outright bans and reckless adventuring, the balance must be found.

Feature: Cloning humans

Professor Severino Antinori

Human Cloning Foundation

bioethics.net

Religious Tolerance looks at cloning