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Aubrey Weese
English 302-N01

Human Cloning

Ever since the cloning of the first mammal, the sheep Dolly, in 1996 by Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute, people have been begun to consider how they feel about human cloning. Is it possible? Should we do it? The overwhelming answer seems to be "yes" to the first question, and "no" to the second.

"Yes," because cloning a human is not much different from cloning a sheep. The cloning procedure is actually so surprisingly non-technical that laboratories could easily begin conducting their own research on human embryos today. In fact, one physicist who researched fertility sciences in the 1980's, Dr. Richard Seed, says he can already do it, and is setting up a clinic.

His clinic probably won't succeed, however, because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would have to approve such a clinic before it could operate, and they probably won't (World Book 13). If he did set up a clinic, the result would most likely turn out the same as a similar event in 1993, when researchers used well-known techniques to begin artificially twinning humans. They immediately became "embroiled in a firestorm of public scrutiny," and they were "criticized by other researchers in the field for jumping ahead without scrutinizing the ethical ramifications" (Bohlin 4).

Clearly, although we have this technology right at our fingertips, the general community doesn't feel right about using it. In a CNN poll taken of 1,005 American adults in 1997, 89% feel that cloning humans is morally unacceptable, 69% are afraid of the possibility of cloning humans, and 74% believe that human cloning is against God's will (Robinson 8). More recently, the Vatican condemned human cloning as being "perverse" (Been 1). The scientists who cloned Dolly are even against human cloning, saying they "see no reason to pursue human cloning and are personally repulsed by the idea" (Bohlin 4). Many senators and bioethicists are also against it, saying things like "This is something we can and should not tolerate. This type of research on humans is morally reprehensible" Sen. Christopher Bond R-Mo., and "The human species doesn't need cloning" Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Center (Bailey 1).

Because the American community is currently so largely against cloning, President Clinton has passed a ban on federal funding of human cloning research, and asked privately funded researchers to stop their work for the time being. In three to five years, however, Congress is going to review the issue to see if the ban is still needed. "Whether upon such further deliberation our nation will conclude that the use of cloning techniques to create children should be allowed or permanently banned is, for the moment, an open question," says the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Executive Summary 2). Since there is going to be a re-discussion of the issue in a few years, I think every person needs to think about where they stand on human cloning. But before we can do this, we need to understand just what cloning is, and how it works.

The simple definition of a clone is a plant or animal that is genetically identical to another plant or animal. There are many examples of clones in nature. All species that reproduce asexually, such as corals, are producing clones of themselves. Many, if not all, higher plants can reproduce asexually as well, though a process called vegetative propagation. For example, plants that produce runners or underground stems are cloning themselves. Armadillos actually naturally give birth to eight genetically identical "octuplets," a batch of eight clones. And of course, genetic twins are an example of human clones that are produced by natural processes. This shows that "there is nothing a priori unnatural about cloning"(Beddington 2), even human cloning, since human clones are sometimes produced naturally in the form of twins, triplets, or quadruplets.

In the laboratory, scientists can produce clones in two ways. The first way is called artificial twinning, or embryo cloning, and has been around a lot longer. To make an embryo clone, scientists mix and egg and sperm on a glass dish, and allow the fertilized egg to develop into a two to eight celled blastula. Next they add a chemical to the dish that dissolves the zona pellucida, the protective covering that provides nutrients to promote cell division. This stops the blastula from dividing further. Then they split the cells of the blastula apart, put them in separate dishes, and recoat them with an artificial zona pellucida, which stimulates them to continue dividing and developing normally. Each new embryo is then placed into the womb of a mother who carries it to full term. This process closely resembles the way natural twins are made the womb of a mother, when the fertilized egg splits apart early in its development. This form of cloning has been used in animal breeding since the late 1980's, an in mice experiments since the late 1970's.

The second way to produce clones is called nuclear transfer. In nuclear transfer, an embryo is formed from an unfertilized egg cell and any other adult tissue cell. The first step is to take some adult tissue cells and put them in a special solution which is low in cell nutrients. This solution will "starve" the cells and cause them to stop dividing. Once they stop dividing, they enter a state called quiescence, where they turn off their active genes, and become less differentiated. This step is important because every cell in the body contains all the DNA needed to produce a whole new copy of the individual. However, in order to activate this potential, a cell has to "forget" what kind of cell it was, and what it was doing before. This is what happens in the quiescent state. Then, once it joins with the egg, its nucleus is able to take on the new role of directing the development of a fetus. This ability is called totipotency. The fact that all human cells are totipotent under the right circumstances is what allows nuclear transfer cloning to work.

The next step is to take the nucleus out of the unfertilized egg cell, and place one of the quiescent tissue cells inside the zone pellucida of the egg cell. After this, scientists electroshock the egg with two pulses. The first pulse causes the two cells to fuse, and the second pulse mimics the burst of energy at the start natural fertilization, which jump-starts cellular division and the genetic program. However, it isn't exactly the same as the message sent to the egg by a sperm, which is one reason why this kind of cloning doesn't always work. After this, the new embryo is placed into a solution where it will grow and divide, and allowed to develop for a few days. Then it is placed in the womb of its mother and carried to birth. This is the process that was used to clone Dolly. The reason Dolly was such a breakthrough was that she was the first time nuclear transfer was used to clone a mammal. Nuclear transfer is the kind of cloning that would allow a clone of an adult to be made.

With the cloning of Dolly, we got much closer to being able to do this with humans. However, there are some differences between cloning a sheep and cloning a human. Above I mentioned that in nuclear-transfer cloning it is important that the DNA in the nucleus of the tissue cell "forgets" it's old job before it is fused with the egg cell. Once the cells are fused, the DNA has to "learn" its new job, namely, producing a baby. It learns this job by receiving messages from the cytoplasm of the egg cell. These messages tell it what genes to turn on and what proteins to produce. The longer the DNA has to learn it's new job before it starts doing it, the more successful the result will be. This is where the difference comes in. The egg cells of sheep have enough protein supply in them to last for four cell divisions before they must depend on proteins produced in the nucleus to continue further. Other mammals, however, like humans and mice, can only go for two or three cell divisions before they depend on the proteins produced in the nucleus. This means that in humans and mice, the DNA has less time to learn it's new job and get accustomed to it's environment before it has to start running the show. It makes a big difference. This is the reason why a sheep was the first animal to be successfully cloned, and not a mouse, which is the standard experimental animal. Scientists tried to clone mice with the same technique used to clone Dolly, but were unsuccessful for this reason.

This difference would make human cloning more difficult, but it is not an insurmountable obstacle. In fact, just recently a bull and about 50 mice have been cloned because of new discoveries that have perfected the cloning technique. In August 1997, scientists at ABS Global Incorporated in DeForest, Wisconsin cloned a calf with a technique they say is more efficient. They used double-nuclear transfer. They produced an embryo using the standard nuclear-transfer technique I outlined above, and then repeated all the steps over again, removing the nucleus and implanting a second one. The egg cell got it's original nucleus taken out, a new one fused in, then that one taken out, and a third one fused in. How in the world could this be more efficient? Apparently, "The double nuclear transplantation helped make the nucleus even more susceptible to reprogramming and increased the success rate of the procedure" (World Book 8). They successfully cloned a calf after only 15 tries with this technique, and compared with 277 tries before Dolly was cloned. However, the tissue cell used to clone this calf was taken from a 30-day-old calf fetus, not an adult bull, and the improvement may be partly due to that.

A more important advance came in July 1998, where scientists cloned 50 mice from adult mouse cells at the University of Hawaii. There were two major differences between their technique and the Dolly technique. The tissue cells they picked to do the cloning were special cells called cumulus cells, that surround the eggs in ovaries. These cells are naturally dormant (not growing), so they don't need to be starved to enter the quiescent state. They are already there. The second difference was, instead of elctroshocking the egg and tissue cell to get them to fuse, the scientists used an extra-fine needle to remove the nucleus from the tissue cell and put it into the egg cell. This process reduced the damage done to the egg cell and "increased the chance that the resulting cell would develop into a healthy embryo" (World Book 10).

Now that scientists can clone mice, we are very close to being able to clone humans. As I said at the beginning of my paper, we probably could do it now, or very soon, if it weren't for the federal controls and community opinion heavily against it.

I would like to turn to this topic now. Why, exactly, are people against human cloning? Now that I have outlined the basic procedure, you can ask yourself this question. Do you see anything wrong with it? As Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine says, "Which ethical principal does cloning violate? Stealing? Lying? Coveting? Murdering? What?" (2). Well, there is a lot of information written by people who are against it as to exactly why they feel that way, and their arguments need to be addressed seriously. I think that there are ways cloning can be done which address the concerns of those who are against it. Let's look at the main arguments one by one.

1. Cloning would weaken the human race by taking away our genetic diversity.

This argument stems from the fact that the whole reason plants and animals use sexual reproduction is that it creates novel gene combinations, which makes the species stronger. "Diversity isn't just politically correct, it's good science," remarked a National Public Radio commentator who opposes cloning (Bailey 9). This diversity helps a species stay ahead of ever-mutating germs, viruses and parasites, that could kill off the whole species if they were all genetically too similar. A good example of this is if a farmer plants a whole crop of corn which is the same hybrid. If the hybrid is susceptible to a particular bug, the entire crop fails. Also, if we all had the same genetic material and ever lost the ability to clone, we would have to turn back to natural reproduction, which would cause inbreeding.

While there is truth to this argument, the danger it presents is easily avoidable. Simply don't make millions of clones of one person. Cloning would have to be done on an incredibly large scale to have the kind of impact on the human race that this argument predicts, and it's very unlikely it ever will be. There might be a few more twins, triplets, etc, but genetic diversity would still be the rule for humanity. If we ever neared anything like this, a simple limit to the amount of clones which could be made would put a stop to the problem. Simply restrict cloning to an individual clone here and there, and don't use as the way of producing the whole next generation, or anything like that. This solution also works for the next argument against cloning.

2. Cloning would make men reproductively obsolete.

This argument stems from the fact that with cloning, it is possible to make a baby without a man. A woman can make an exact clone of herself from an egg cell and a tissue cell from her body. Then, all that is needed is a woman to carry and deliver the baby. So, with cloning technology, we could theoretically have a human race of all women. While it is true that this could happen, is it true that it would happen? No, for a number of reasons. First of all, everybody would have to agree to it, and that's just not going to happen. While there may be some women out there who think life would be better without men, most of them don't, and men certainly aren't going to agree to it, either. Also, most people are not going to want to give up sexual reproduction. "For many reasons, the vast majority…will still prefer the 'old-fashioned,' sexual way of producing children. No other method better expresses the loving union of a man and a woman seeking to make a baby" (Green 5). On top of that, giving up sexual reproduction would present the problem I mentioned above. For men to be reproductively obsolete we would have to clone all our offspring which would cause us to be less diverse and more susceptible to disease. "The secret to human existence lies in variation that comes from sexual reproduction," says Dr. Colin Stewart for Time magazine. We cannot do away with it totally.

Both of these concerns just aren't going to take place in a society that has any foresight at all. They aren't really arguments against cloning itself, but arguments against using cloning in certain unwise ways. While it is true that we shouldn't use cloning in these ways, that doesn't mean we shouldn't use cloning at all.

The arguments that I find much stronger are those that say the process of cloning itself is unethical, regardless of whether the results are good or bad to society. Why might cloning be unethical? Because, according to those against it, it "devalues human life" in three main ways: by taking away the clone's individuality, by turning clones into products to be used for other people's desires, and by making embryos disposable. Let's look at these three ways one by one to see if they are true, and if so, what can be done about it.

1. Cloning would devalue human life by taking away the clone's individuality.

If a clone is a "carbon copy" of another human being, some people fear that clones would not have an identity of their own. They would not be a unique person. These people say that "each person has a right to one's own unique genotype, or genetic code-a right that human cloning violates" (Green 5).

But would a clone really not be a unique individual? No, because genetic code is only a small part of what makes a person. According to polls, some 30 to 40 percent of Americans are "genetic essentialists, who believe that genes almost completely determine who a person is" (Bailey 2). But there is a lot of evidence that this is not the case.

First of all, look at identical twins, the closest thing we have to clones today. Is there anyone who would say twins are not unique individuals? "I think the estimates are that twins are likely to have something like 50 percent common social traits," says Daniel Callahan for Time magazine. This leaves 50 percent uncommon social traits, in two individuals who have the same DNA, were carried in the same womb, and most likely grew up in the same environment. Two identical twins will not have the same personality or be the same person, as any one who knows some can testify.

Nuclear-transfer clones (clones of adults) would even be more different than identical twins are. First of all, their DNA would be inserted into a different egg cell and carried in a different womb than their predecessor. This might not seem like it would make that big a difference, but actually, it does. "A clone that grew from one person's DNA inserted in another person's host egg would pick up 'maternal factors' from the proteins in that egg, altering its development. Physiological differences between the womb of the original and host mothers could also affect the clone's development" (Bailey 2). For example, the baby could turn out taller or shorter depending on what part of the uterus the egg attaches to. Scientists even say that fraternal twins might have more similarities than clones because of this factor. Fraternal twins grow up in the same womb together and therefore "grow a bond during their first nine months" (Hawley 5). Nobody knows how much difference developing in a different egg cell and womb will make yet, but there definitely will be some.

An even bigger factor is the environment the clone will grow up in. A big part of what makes us who we are is our life experiences and our memories - the things that happen to us, and how respond to them. These will be different for every person. "You could clone one - hundred Hitler embryos and not get a single Hitler because he was shaped by his environment" (Been 4). In fact, "someone trying to clone a future Adolf Hitler might instead produce a modestly talented painter" (Green 3). Genes for a certain trait aren't the only thing needed to produce that trait - you also need the right environment. A person can inherit genes for large body size but if they don't get proper nutrition their growth may be stunted. Or they may inherit genes for musical ability, but if their family has no interest in music, those genes may never be expressed.

There are so many factors that go into making a person who they are, that cloning will never make a perfect carbon copy of another person. If that's what the parents of the clone want, they will be disappointed. This possible parental disappointment actually turns out to be another facet of the problem of individuality. Will the parents of the clone try to make the clone be just like the person who was cloned, and therefore suppress their individuality? This could be especially likely to happen in families where parents decide to clone a loved one who died. Although this is a worry, says Ronald M. Green for Scientific American, "it is not unique to cloning" (5). Parents have been known to place unrealistic expectations on their natural-born children as well, expecting them to be like their mother or father, sister or brother, or whatever the parents want. Just as in these circumstances, accurate information and good counseling is needed. "What is needed is caution, not necessarily prohibition" (Green 5). Since we foresee this could be a problem, we could talk to parents about it both before and after the clone is born. The parents need to be aware of the same things I have stated above, that a person is not defined by their genes.

The clone will be a unique person, and as long as society is taught to treat them like one, this argument will no longer be a concern.

2. Cloning would devalue human life by turning clones into products to be used for other people's desires.

Some people worry that if cloning were to be made legal, the clones would be exploited. Since clones are made in a different way than we are used to humans being made, there may be a temptation to see them as less than human, and use them in ways to serve our needs. For example, a whole bunch of clones with greater than average strength and lower than average intelligence could be produced for menial labor, like in the book Brave New World by Adolx Huxley. Or, since clones are a perfect physical match to their predecessor, they could be frozen and used for spare parts if the predecessor's organs were to fail. Although the former has never been considered as of yet, I have actually seen the latter in some lists of reasons why we should continue research on human cloning. People are rightly concerned that this is immoral and they worry that even if we didn't start out with an intention to use clones this way, we might move in this direction. "We must not demean [clones] by fundamentally subordinating their interests to those of others, forcing upon them conditions they might not have consented to had it been possible to consult them," says John F. Kilner for Life Advocate magazine (3).

This is a valid concern, but it is also easily avoidable. The answer lies in defining a clone as no different than any other human being. There is no reason to think that just because they were conceived in a laboratory dish, they are not fully human. Nobody questions whether babies produced by in vitro fertilization are fully human. Also, there is no reason to think that just because they share the same genes with somebody else, they are not fully human. "Today, we call such people identical twins" (Bailey 2). And nobody thinks that identical twins are not fully human. As Ronald Bailey says, "The simple response to this scenario is: Clones are people. You must treat them like people" (3). As long as clones are guaranteed the same rights as any other person, this problem will disappear. "Existing laws and institutions should protect people produced by cloning from exploitation. Cloned humans could no more be 'harvested' for their organs than people can be today" (Green 5).

Treating clones as less than human would be an abuse of the technology, which should be avoided. But it is important to remember that "one has to separate possible abuses of a technology from the debate over whether a technology is moral. Quantum physics is not immoral because it has been used to design nuclear weapons" (Robinson 9). In the same way, cloning is not immoral because it could be used to exploit people. The thing that is immoral is exploiting people, not cloning them.

3. Cloning would devalue human life by making embryos disposable.

I believe this last argument is the strongest argument of all against human cloning. It is also by far the most often mentioned one. If we were to start cloning humans today, many embryos would die in the process. Take for example the cloning of Dolly. The scientists fused 277 cells. Out of these 277, only 29 began growing as embryos. Out of those 29 embryos, only one survived into a baby lamb. "This translates to a success rate of only 3.4%, and the success rate is even less (0.36%), when you calculate using the 277 initial cell fusions attempted" (Bohlin 2). With the mice cloning attempt, the success rate was almost 10 times better (2% to 3% calculating with the initial fusions). But this is still very low when we consider that "In nature somewhere between 33 and 50% of all fertilized eggs develop fully into newborns" (Bohlin 2). Why is this low success rate a problem? It's a problem if you consider human embryos to be people, which I do.

"Some feel it necessary to classify human embryos as people, which have their rights, and others classify the embryos as nothing more than basic cellular tissue. This may seem like a trivial semantic argument, but it is very important when the embryo research that is being conducted is done on human embryos. There is a huge leap between a person and a collection of underdeveloped cells. The question that will need to be asked is whether embryonic cells deserve the same moral standing as fully developed persons" (Deltapoint).

This is the same issue that is behind the abortion controversy. I believe that abortion is wrong because I am a Christian and I believe that God is concerned about people even before they are born. The Bible says, "For You created my inmost being, You knit me together in my mother's womb…My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place…Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be" Psalm 139:13-16.

If this is true, then cloning would also be wrong if it caused unborn embryos to die. Many human embryos died while in vitro fertilization was being perfected, and to many people, this was wrong, no matter what the benefits of the technology are, and no matter that scientists expected to get better at doing it. "We have no right to kill with the promise of one day 'doing it right'" (Ramey 8). These people do not want the same thing to happen while the process of cloning is perfected. They are especially against human cloning techniques that would kill embryos along the way to final result, such as the way the bull was cloned in DeForest, Wisconsin, where the nucleus was taken out the first fertilized embryo. Or, cloning combined with genetic screening where embryos that are considered to be "defective" are destroyed.

What is the solution to this problem? It is not as easy as the solution to the others, and will require some sacrifices on the part of the scientific community, but I believe it is the right thing to do. Right now the low success rate of cloning is a main reason the government has placed a ban on trying it with humans. "At present, the use of this technique to create a child would be a premature experiment that would expose the fetus and the developing child to unacceptable risks. This in itself might be sufficient to justify a prohibition on cloning human beings at this time" (Executive Summary 2).

I believe that this ban should continue until scientists can find the animals that are the most similar to humans, and get the success rate in cloning them up very high. If they never can get it very high, we should never try it on humans. And, if we do begin trying it on humans and it begins failing because something unforeseen has happened, we should stop immediately. We should never try to perfect the technique by experimenting on human embryos, even if this means never being able to perfect it. And, we should never use cloning in any way that causes embryos to die, such as genetic screening, no matter how tempting the benefits of doing so might be. If we do, "cloning even with the best of intentions [will become] a grave immorality as some human embryos are determined to be defective, and some are selected for continued life…while others are destroyed" (Ramey 7). If, however, we can find a way to do cloning without destroying human embryos in the process, I don't have a problem with it.

Now that we have discussed a number of reasons given not to do cloning, you may be wondering, is there any reason to do it? Indeed, some people have said that possibly the risks outweigh the benefits when it comes to human cloning. "Human cloning is fraught with too many possible difficulties, from the waste of human fetal life during research to the commercializing of human babies with far too little potential advantage to individuals and society" (Bohlin 8). These people may be right. Let me list a few potential benefits of cloning, and let you decide for yourself.

Cloning would make it possible for infertile couples to have biologically-related children, by producing a clone of one of the parents. It could also help increase the potential of women getting pregnant with in-vitro fertilization. Doctors like to fertilize many eggs in-vitro and implant them all into the woman's uterus to increase the chance of one resulting in pregnancy. But some women can only produce one egg. For these women, that one fertilized egg could be cloned multiple times using embryo splitting and then implanted in her uterus.

Also, it could help couples to have healthy children if one of them carries a potentially disease-causing genetic defect. A clone could be made of the parent who does not carry the defect. Also, some genetic defects are caused by flawed genes located in the mitochondria (energy producing structures) of a woman's egg cells. If a woman had this defect, she could have a healthy baby by having one of her tissue cells (or her husband's tissue cells) fused with a healthy egg cell from another woman.

Cloning could also open the way to elimination of genetic diseases using a process called gene therapy, where the actual genes that cause the disease are corrected or replaced in the DNA sequence. Right now corrected genes are carried into the infected cells via special viruses created in the lab called vectors. But these vectors are very inefficient, only able to "reach and alter the DNA in a frustratingly small number of cells" (Green 4). With cloning techniques, however, scientists could expose a large number of tissue cells to these vectors in a petri dish, and then could determine which cells took up the corrected sequence using florescent tags that cause them to glow. The nucleus of these cells could then be used to clone a baby without the disease. The baby and all it's descendants would then carry the corrected gene in their bodies.

There is also the benefit of increased scientific knowledge and skill that may to lead to benefits down the road we can't even foresee now. I have already mentioned cloning possibly leading to new treatments for genetic diseases. It might also produce greater understanding of the causes of miscarriages, helping women who cannot bring a fetus to term, and a greater understanding of the mechanisms by which an embryo attaches itself by the uterus, producing more effective contraceptives with fewer side effects. And, who knows what else?

All of this leads me to conclude that although there are risks to cloning, these risks can be avoided if careful measures are taken. I think that cloning should be pursued because of the potential benefits it can have, but that it should be pursued very cautiously, with careful deliberation each step along the way. "As with any scientific or technological advance, the most important question that needs to be asked is whether or not the gains outweigh the potential losses. Will human cloning become a brave new step in fighting disease and improving the quality of life, or will it lead to dehumanization and a new genetic underclass?" (Deltapoint). The answer to this question lies in our hands. I think that the gains of human cloning can outweigh the potential losses, but only if we take the dangers seriously.

Works Cited

Bailey, Ronald.  The Twin Paradox.  Reason Online.  May 1997.

Beddington, Rosa. Cloning. 1997.

Been, Jennie. Can we and should we clone humans?

Bohlin, Dr. Ray. Can Humans Be Cloned Like Sheep? 1997.  

Deltapoint, Inc. Human Cloning and Re-Engineering. 1996

Green, Ronald M.  I, Clone.  Scientific American.  September 1999.

Hawley, Aaron.  Cloning.  March 2, 1998.

Kilner, Dr. John F. Cloning Around. Life Advocate. July/August 1997.

National Bioethics Advisory Commission.  Executive Summary - Cloning Human Beings. June 1997.

Ramey, Cathy. Cloning: A Theological View. Life Advocate. July/August 1997.

Robinson, Bruce A.  Ethical Aspects of Human Cloning. January 15, 2000.

Slouching Towards Creation.  Time.

World Book v 1.4 Cloning: Are Humans Next? 1999.

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