Creepy and inevitable: Cloning us

How can research ever be banned?

Adam Pertman, Globe Staff, 7/13/2001

Dr. Michael West, the head of Advanced Cell Technology, is driven by a mythical goal: to help humans live forever. (Globe Staff Photo / Tom Landers) Profile: Dr. Michael West  RELATED STORIES Congress likely to renew debate  FROM THE ARCHIVES Coverage of Advanced Cell Technology and human embryo research from The Boston Globe: NOVEMBER 23, 2001 Cows cloned by Worcester firm reported to be growing normally AUGUST 11, 2001 Stem cell grants could begin in Jan. AUGUST 10, 2001 Bush issues a limited OK on stem-cell funds JULY 26, 2001 Patent hints how firm may farm human tissue JULY 13, 2001 Worcester firm aims to clone human cells MARCH 18, 2001 Focus: How can cloning research ever be banned?  RESOURCES Text of Bush decision Highlights of Bush's decision Public opinion on stem cells Ways of cultivating stem cells Definitions of stem cell terms Stem cell FAQ  ON THE WEB Companies doing embryonic stem cell research: Advanced Cell Technology Worcester www.advancedcell.com Geron Inc. Menlo Park, Calif. www.geron.com Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine Norfolk, Va. www.jonesinstitute.org Government sites: Dept. of Health & Human Services www.hhs.gov National Institutes of Health www.nih.gov

oday's explosively worded arguments over human cloning sound eerily like echoes suspended in time for a quarter-century.

When the world got word in 1981 that the first test-tube baby had been "created" in Britain, everyone from medical ethicists to infertility authorities to ordinary citizens wondered aloud - and loudly - whether we were entering dangerous moral and scientific territory.

"What sort of children will we produce if we tamper with nature?" they asked. "Will this technology simply allow the most affluent among us to reproduce their egos?" And, of course: "Are we trying to play God?"

That debate reverberated through the international research community in the 1980s, when a top French biologist, Jacques Testard, abandoned his career after devising a process for freezing embryos.

"Let's stop pretending that research is neutral and that only its applications can be called good or bad," Testard warned in a farewell statement. "I will go no further and will attempt no breakthroughs."

Other scientists have not followed his lead.

Six years ago, for example, a controversial infertility doctor helped a 62-year-old woman in Italy become the oldest woman ever to become pregnant; her son had died at the age of 17, and she believed another child would ease her pain. A debate raged over the ethics and morals of that procedure, too.

Now that same Italian doctor, Severino Antinori, has lit another bonfire by announcing that he and an American colleague, Panayiotis Zavos, are conducting research that will yield a human clone within two years.

Since hearing that news a couple of weeks ago, during a fertility conference in Rome, scientists have derided the two men as modern-day Frankensteins. Ethicists have condemned them as corrupt. The Vatican has described their experiments as "grotesque." All the critics have suggested a singular response: a worldwide ban (which some governments already have instituted) to prevent human cloning from ever happening.

Yet, just as in-vitro fertilization has long since become routine, and frozen embryo transfers are slowly starting to take place, human cloning also is going to happen. Right or wrong, openly or clandestinely, sooner or later, technologies that are devised invariably are used. And when the technology in question promises to satisfy a primal urge - becoming a parent - while offering the prospect of big payoffs - people reportedly have offered to pay huge sums to become guinea pigs - then its advent becomes inevitable.

"No question about it," says Robert Lanza, vice president for medical and scientific development at Advanced Cell Technologies Inc. in Worcester.

Lanza, whose company is at the cutting edge of cloning techniques, cringes at the idea of using them to make genetic duplicates of human beings. He also worries that the disclosure of even one failed human effort will cause a public backlash against all forms of the procedure.

"It's outrageous and unethical. The people who want to do this, to say the very, very least, are irresponsible. They should lose their medical license," says Rudolph Jaenisch, a pioneer in cloning at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge. Asked if he believes the experimenters will do what they promise, Jaenisch sighs his reply: "Absolutely they will."

So, if the mainstream nightmare vision is going to materialize, in two years or in 20, why aren't scientists, religious leaders, and politicians trying to establish monitoring mechanisms to guard against abuses? Why aren't they writing regulations to promote good practices, or drafting laws to punish wrongdoers and keep honest people honest, rather than focusing their efforts solely on preventing the inevitable?

The biggest reason appears to be that most critics find the very notion of human cloning so heinous, and the potential consequences so catastrophic, that they oppose its use under any circumstances. Many say they fear that advocating anything other than an outright ban would effectively legitimize the research, thereby inducing current researchers to accelerate their efforts and, worse, luring more of them into this brave new world.

The detractors' concerns, by any measure, are sobering.

Some are moral and religious, including profound questions about creating life without the participation of male and female components - a line no previous high-tech infertility treatment has ever approached. Others range from the visceral (finding it creepy to think of growing a human being out of a skin cell) to the intellectual (should egomaniacs be allowed to replicate themselves, or should depressed parents be permitted to replace a deceased child with a new, identical "twin"?).

Then there are the ethical and practical objections.

Experiments, by their very nature, often fail. Thousands of animals died before and after birth, emerged deformed, developed physical and neurological abnormalities, and exhibited all sorts of other small and large problems before Dolly the cloned sheep arrived in 1997. And animals are still dying, or experiencing dire difficulties, as cloning research continues.

"Are we going to allow human beings to go through these sorts of horrors?" says Jaenisch. He adds that the early development of cloned cells is so different from that of normally produced embryos that the resulting animal invariably is born with or later develops some defect.

Jaenisch says the process of producing human clones will probably be even easier than doing so with other mammals because of medicine's long experience nurturing fetuses created with in-vitro techniques. But he cautions that while "the efficiency may be higher, the underlying biological problem is not solved by being more efficient."

The defenders of human cloning reject all these objections. They insist their critics are unfairly trying to impose their conservative social and religious views, and antiquated ones at that, onto scientists whose only sin is utilizing the most modern methods available to try to counteract infertility.

If the critics' anxiety is about possible abuse, some cloning advocates suggest imposing standards and passing laws to punish offenders. Moreover, they maintain the benefits of human cloning will be so important that they are worth the risks involved in the research required to make it a reality.

"We should be trying to get the world prepared to receive this technology, not just arguing about whether it's right or wrong," says Zavos, who runs a successful fertility business in Kentucky and says more than 600 couples have signed up for his team's human-cloning project. "The genie is out of the bottle. So let's develop criteria with which we can deal with this issue. That's what I'm challenging the world to do."

Nearly everyone interviewed on this subject agrees that, for several reasons, the first person to successfully produce a cloned baby will probably do so surreptitiously. "It's naive to think there aren't people out there who already haven't done it, or at least are attempting to," says Michael Bishop, president of Wisconsin-based Infigen, Inc., one of the nation's foremost developers of advanced cloning technologies for animals.

Secrecy seems probable partly because the researcher would know that any disclosure about such work could shut it down, and probably stigmatize everyone involved - from the scientist to the parent to the child.

At least as important, closed doors hide mistakes; that is, if one or more flawed beings were created (or died) through cloning, no one would have to know. In this scenario, an announcement would only be made once a seemingly healthy person was produced, or perhaps even after he or she was several years old to ensure that no problems had arisen.

"In fact, I think when we find out about successful cloning, it will be for more than one to show that it's not some kind of a fluke," says Randolfe H. Wicker, chief executive officer of the Human Cloning Foundation, an organization that advocates the procedure. Wicker is a onetime gay-rights activist who sees this new technology as the ultimate fertility tool for everyone - but especially for men, because they can't impregnate themselves, as women can, with other people's eggs or sperm.

Wicker is also a libertarian who believes only the scientists affected should work out the ethical and procedural guidelines for cloning. "Government messes up everything it touches; it should keep its hands off the rights of people who want to reproduce in this fashion," he says.

William Hoffman, the communications director for the Institute of Medical Biotechnology, has tracked this raging debate about cloning for years. While he believes that everyone involved means what they say, he also suspects there is an underlying reason for many opponents' views: an instinctive fear of the unknown.

Essentially, while he harbors reservations about the motives of some researchers ("Are they in it for the money?") and has concerns about some consequences ("Will we stigmatize the cloned children the way we used to do with adoptees?"), Hoffman thinks society will work through the issues as the process becomes real and, therefore, demystified.

Even some opponents of human cloning agree with that notion.

Bishop, for instance, says monitoring and regulation probably will replace the calls for bans once human clones become reality. And he takes issue with critics like Jaenisch, asserting that many cloned animals are born without defects - indicating the same is possible for humans.

The questions surrounding human cloning go on and on; they are as weighty as they are extensive. Should it be permitted on a more limited basis, for example to produce vital organs that can keep people alive? If - or when - a whole person is duplicated, how will that alter our most fundamental understandings of what constitutes life, family, and self?

It is largely because we, as individuals and a society, haven't even begun to grapple with such issues that many ethicists argue human cloning shouldn't be permitted to take place. At least not yet.

"It's irresponsible and it's unethical in the practice of medicine," says George Annas, chairman of the Health Law Department at Boston University's School of Public Health. Annas suggests the licenses of doctors who engage in the practice should be revoked, their papers should not be published, and laws should be passed imposing heavy penalties on them.

But Annas, who believes some "renegades" will clone humans anyway, also leaves the ethical judgment door ever-so-slightly ajar. Asked if he thought a ban should last forever, he replied, "Well, at least for right now."

Adam Pertman is the Globe's Focus writer.