My Clone's Bad Image

Nicolas Copernicus proposed, that the sun is in the middle of the planetary system,  and not the earth. This idea is one of the greatest milestones of modern science and ordinary people of the 16^th century rejected it as simple blasphemy. What’s more, is that demand for his revealing book was very low, according to the English science writer Philip Ball. (354) Copernicus wrote his findings using Latin and such a specific astronomic jargon that only his most talented colleagues could understand the book, says the science philosopher Thomas S. Kuhn. The general public had therefore no factual understanding and had no other information, but that the church strongly disapproved of it. One of the greatest milestones of astronomy, simply not understood.

Nowadays we assume, in the age of Google, Wikipedia and unlimited information, the general society is informed enough to not reject findings or a certain technology on a basis of a bad image. But is this true? Can we be sure that modern scientists do not have similar problems as Copernicus had several hundred years ago? Take the issue of cloning. A representative study from 2008 sponsored by the National Institutes of Health discovered that 82.9 % of all Germans disapprove of cloning. (Beutel) But cloning techniques have many important advantages to society such as curing diseases and overcoming infertility. So why is cloning so vastly rejected?

The study concludes, that “results demonstrate considerable uncertainty and information deficits in the community,”(Beutel) but it is left open what the uncertainty comes from. The ordinary man comes in touch with the topic of cloning mostly through broadcast and fictional writing.  The movies of the “Star Wars” saga, particularly the second one, “Attack of the Clones”, and the film “the Boys from Brazil” use cloning as a main motive. In the first example, Clones are stylized as a tool for war, an army of physically perfect killers produced in an industrial production. In the later one, Nazis escaped from Europe after the world war, clone Hitler 94 times to threaten humanity once more. The media paints a very dark and threating picture of cloning. The media touches on the fear, that humans could become an industrial product. The people of the Copernicus’ age had the fear to loose their identity as the sacrosanct species in the center of the universe. Similarly, seeing the mentioned movies one initially feels that the human race can loose their identity again, as the basic concept of all humans being unique could be comprised. Cloning appears to threaten society.

The opposite is true. As we scientifically investigate the techniques and and what it has to offer, we must be free from what science fiction tells us.

 

Cloning is a down-to-earth biological technique that has nothing to do with industrial instrumentalization of humans. It means biologically only to replace the nucleus, that part of the cell containing the genetic information passed on from parents to children, of an egg cell with a nucleus from a different cell. The other cell could be any cell from the person of the egg cell itself (host) or from a second person (donor). Scientists then help the newly “loaded” egg cell to divide with an electric stream and natural division factors. Furthermore, the created cell assumes the ability to divide into any body cell; it is said to be “omnipotent”. The omnipotent now is regarded as embryo cell, because it the opportunity to create an entire human being. The process can be compared with the natural process of a sperm fertilizing the egg cell. The difference is that the sperm only inserts half of the required genome into the egg cell (the other half comes from the egg cell), whereas cloning injects a complete genome into the hollow egg cell.

Science distinguishes two forms of cloning, therapeutic and reproductive cloning. For reproductive cloning the embryo is implanted in a woman’s whomb to be eventually born. In therapeutic cloning there also is an exchange of a nucleus and similarly to reproductive cloning the created cells behave like an embryo. After the first five days of nuclear exchange, the stem cells are extracted and multiplied to obtain specific adult stems cells. With these specific cells lies one of the fundamental benefits like alleviating diseases, explains Prof. Alan Trounson from Monash University. (Trounson)

Already Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, had acknowledged that one must  “recognize that stem cell research has huge potential to improve the lives of suffering from disease, there are also strong ethical arguments in its favour” (qtd. In Klotzko 71). The adult stem cells are cells that are found naturally as undifferentiated cells in a specific organ and can differentiate into specific cells for that one organ. In contrast, embryonic stem cells as derived from therapeutic cloning can differentiate into any cell of any organ. (Trounson)That makes them extremely valuable for medicine. If inserted to a damaged tissue these stem cells have the ability to repair the tissue and allow the organ to work again. According to the writer, lawyer and bioethicist Judith Klotzko this technique could be used to treat spine and brain damage, various forms of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and heart muscle damages to name a few. (76) Scientists working at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Boston announced 2008 that they were able to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson’s in mice using stem cell therapy. (Werning)

A popular example of stem cell treatment has existed for years: Bone marrow donation. Bone marrow from a donor is given to a leukemia patient to create working red blood cells. However it is often very difficult to find an appropriate donor to diminish the chance of the patient’s body rejecting the donor’s marrow. Therapeutic cloning can also solve this problem. If the patient donates one cell from his body therapeutic cloning can produce an abundant number of specific blood adult stem cells that can be given to the patient without the body rejecting the tissue. (Klotzko 74) This way therapeutic cloning could alleviate sufferings of thousand of people. If not Millions.

As of now, however, all kinds of cloning, even therapeutic cloning for stem cell research is strictly forbidden in Germany. The law ensuring this dates back to 1991 and states that an individual “who artificially causes a human embryo with the same genetic information as another embryo, a fetus, a human being or a deceased person to come into being shall be liable to penal sanctions” (Germany). In order to understand the reasoning, we must acknowledge that German law regards the fertilized egg cell as an embryo, with all its rights to live. Therapeutic cloning is hence forbidden as it will not allow the egg cell to develop to a human being. 

According to German news agency and broadcaster “Deutsche Welle”(DW), the “Council on Ethical Issues in the Life Sciences” was founded in 2002 in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the law in developing sciences. The council, made up of 25 scientists, theologians, business executives and trade union representatives, gives frequent recommendations on ethical issues. (DW staff) The council articulated several ethical problems associated with cloning. They argued that this technique would impede the human dignity of the clone because of self-determination and right not to be utilized. In other words, cloning removes the right to not be a clone and replaces it with a functional replication designed for a purpose. 

However does self-determination really include one’s genetic information? Does a normal embryo have the ability to choose his or her genetic code? And similarly, identical twins do not have the right to be genetically dissimilar to one another. The right to self determination should begin when we actually have the ability to choose for ourselves who we want to be. This will not be before childhood.

As for the argument, that clones have the right not be purposefully utilized, we must distinguish between the purposes and must acknowledge that normally begotten children can be similarly exploited for a specific reason. For instance, a couple may decide to have a child to continue the family business or to foster a relationship. Would we forbid these couples to have a baby? No, because it is simply not our business. Additionally, reasons for couples to have a clone is not one of creating a galactic army of evil, but to have a child they can love, and because they cannot conceive one more naturally.

This is also one of the strongest reasons for reproductive cloning.  Today, if one of the partners in the relationship is infertile, there is no other options, but to adopt a child or to ask somebody else to donate the sperms or egg cells. Cloning for reproductive purposes will solve this problem. Take the example of Greg and Debby, a couple interviewed by the BBC documentary “Cloning the first Human – BBC Horizon“. Debby was infertile after her cancer treatment and was unable to adopt. She considered cloning the “light at the end of the tunnel“ (Cloning).

The scientific prospects for cloning humans are good. A team of scientists from South Korea published their results on cloning humans in the journal Science in 2004. The group had created 30 cloned human embryos and had taken embryonic stem cells from one of them. (Klotzko, introduction XXXI) These embryos were not brought to terms, because of the fear of miscarriages and abnormalities of the embryos. Professor Ian Wilmut, director of the Roslin institute, agrees, that as of today “the most likely outcome would include late abortions and birth of abnormal children. [... However], grand assumptions are unwarranted given the very preliminary nature of these studies“(Cloning). 

Indeed, Dr. Severino Antinori, an embryologist heading a clinic in Rome, said in the same documentary that one could use “monitoring procedures to avoid 99.9 percent of abnormalities” (Cloning). If he is right we will be able to see a healthy human clone within this decade. Additionally, Klotzko says “Instruments necessary for single cell manipulation [,as needed for humane cloning], are widely available in IVF clinics” (XXI) and “there is no reason to believe that humans cannot be cloned. ” (18)

Cloning however does remain scary for many. It is one of the weaknesses of this technique, “that it creates a visual fear” to see his or her own copy as journalist and scholar Prof. Elizabeth Talyor puts it. But it is not true that clones are exact copies. Environmental factors after birth can alternate the expression of genes even if the DNA remains practically unchanged. The National Institute of Health has shown that factors like “diet, stress and post-natal maternal behavior”(Studies) can alternate one’s genetic predispositon to diseases, for instance.

 

But beyond that, what determines our character? Besides the genes, also our upbringing, relationships, decision we make and many other factors determine who we are. Genetic clones will not have the same personality.

One could view it as bringing up one’s own twin brother or sister as a child. This at least appears to sound more acceptable than the word “cloning”. In fact, to facilitate the overcoming of prejudices and of associations from science fiction, many scholars in the United Kingdom refer to therapeutic cloning as “nuclear exchange technique”(Klotzko 72).

 

In the end, cloning does have many different useful applications and cloning includes different techniques and can be used for several different purposes. It is that differentiation that we need to make. 

While it is unlikely that reproductive cloning can be performed for humans -  both legally and scientifically – within the next years, it may be part of our medical techniques soon. We should not refrain from at least dedicating effort and funds to exploring the opportunities we can yield from cloning.

 

Bibliography

 

Ball, Philip. The Devil's Doctor. S.l.: Arrow, 2007. Print.

Beutel, M. "Egg Donation, Surrogate Mothering, and Cloning: Attitudes of Men and Women in Germany Based on a Representative Survey." US National Library of Medicine. Web. 19 Sept. 2011. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18684445>.

Cloning the First Human - BBC Horizon. BBC Horizon. Web. 20 Sept. 2011.     <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw1CX6ku0NQ>.

DW Staff. "Germany's Ethics Council Rejects Cloning | Germany | Deutsche Welle | 13.09.2004." Home | Deutsche Welle. 13 Sept. 2004. Web. 18 Sept. 2011. <http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1327256,00.html>.

Germany. German National Ethics Council. Cloning for Reproductive Purposes and Cloning for the Purposes of Biomedical Research. By Spiros Simitis, Prof. Dr. H.c. 2004. Web. 18 Sept. 2011. <http://www.ethikrat.org/files/Opinion_Cloning.pdf>. 

Klotzko, Arlene Judith. A Clone of Your Own?: the Science and Ethics of Cloning. New York: Cambridge UP, 2006. Print.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Copernican Revolution; Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1957. Print.P.185

Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics. Cloning and Stem Cell Research. Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics - Homepage. 2001. Web. 18 Sept. 2011. <http://www.linacre.org/stemcell.html>. 

Star Wars, Episode II, Attack of the Clones. Sony Classical, 2002.

"Studies Identify Subtle Genetic Changes’ Risk for Mental Disorders." NIMH · Home. National Institute for Mental Health, 05 May 2008. Web. 27 Sept. 2011. <http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2008/studies-identify-subtle-genetic-changes-risk-for-mental-disorders-may-lead-to-targets-for-new-better-therapies.shtml>.

Taylor, Elizabeth. "Discussion on First Draft of Explanatory Essay." Personal interview. 26 Sept. 2011.

The Boys from Brazil. Dir. Franklin J. Schaffner. 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, 1978.

Trounson, Alan O. "Cloning: Potential Benefits for Human Medicine." The Medical Journal of Australia. Monash University. Web. 19 Sept. 2011. <https://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/xmas/trounson/trounson.html>.

Wernig, Marius. "Reprogrammed Cells Reduce Parkinson's Symptoms in Rats." Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. 08 Apr. 2008. Web. 26 Sept. 2011. <http://www.wi.mit.edu/news/archives/2008/rj_0407.html>.