Human Cloning

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard the claims of California scientist (M.D. / Ph.D.) Dr. Samuel Wood.

Following in the footsteps of the world famous sheep “Dolly,” Wood has used donated eggs and skin cells from himself to create a viable clone. The clone was allowed to grow to the ten cell stage before it was destroyed. On the one television interview that I managed to catch, Wood claimed that his experiment was a “miracle of modern science” and a great leap forward in the field of stem cell research. (Presumably, cloned embryos could be used as a source of stem cells.)

I find myself of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, cloning tissues and organs sounds like an appealing technique for doctors to use. Why wait for a heart transplant when I can have a heart stored in an organ bank that is made from my own DNA? On the other hand, if I believe that life begins at fertilization (something that, as a scientist, I am prone to doubt), then these embryos were murdered in a laboratory in the name of progress.

It seems to me that the whole argument concerning cloning hinges on the definition of life. No matter where you fall in the debate, you have to ask yourself a simple question: Does life begin at fertilization? Is there a list of criteria that an organism has to meet to be considered a human life? This argument is closely related to the one for abortion. You can phrase both arguments in whatever post-modern or feminist mumbo-jumbo that you want, but the bottom line is that as a pregnant woman, you now have a passenger. A woman’s right to choose becomes muddled in the debate of what constitutes human life; the questions surrounding this supposed “right to choose” become irrelevant when determining both the viability and the destiny of another human being.

Viability becomes a key word in the debate centering on cloning. Faced with the benefits of such research–rehabilitation for brain conditions, organ transplants, regeneration of missing limbs, complete recovery after strokes, etc.–I am cautiously optimistic about the reports coming out of California. I suppose my own answer to the morality of the cloning question lays in my position on abortion. I’m not in favor of using abortion as a means of birth control. I find such a use of the technique to be both repugnant and irresponsible. However, there are circumstances under which I would consider it, if not moral, then at least not amoral.. By logical extension, in vitro fertilization, followed by careful monitoring and harvesting of stem cells, seems to be an acceptable technique. Note that without the support framework of a healthy mother, host to the unwitting “passenger,” these cells are doomed to early apoptosis. They lack viability. There will be no heartbeat, no distinguishable limbs, no differentiation of tissues…just cells.

Given these circumstances, I can’t say that  there was a “murder” taking place in the lab in California. Even an argument centering around the “potential” of such a life is fundamentally flawed, as based on scientific fact. If you find yourself doubting this from a morality standpoint, I would humbly suggest that you check your moral code concerning birth control and look for inconsistency.

That leaves us with the last point in the debate: Should Dr. Wood have done it? His admitted reasons are obvious. Who wants to see beloved grandparents slip into senility? Who wants to see a child in need of an organ transplant die a painful death? If we can work miracles by applying our knowledge of physiology and chemistry, do we not have an obligation to do so? Or by intervening in the process of the creation of another human life, do we make ourselves less than human? You have my own pragmatic answer above. What you have to decide is where you fall.