Cloning and EthicsFollow

In my ethics class today we watched a video about the Italian doctor Zavos et al putting forth his plan to clone a human being, mind you the video was a few years old but we were looking at the Ethical issues involved and the consequences of full human cloning.

I found the general belief in the class to be wholly against cloning which didn't surprise me that much but it was the way in which they rejected the idea. They failed to weigh up the pros and cons of it, which is a standard in our lessons to get a unbiased view on ethical situations.

The way they were rejecting the very idea of cloning was a bit disconcerting. I've always been open minded to new ideas and research and I personally am all for Therapuetic Cloning for say to grow human tissues or organs to replace those affected by cancer or other genetically linked diseases.

But anyway I just wanted to know what the general feeling is on the forums(and to get some more info for the next lesson).

The hardest part of the cloning arguement is: Once you start where do you stop.

As the boundry gets pushed further and further the more repercussions you are going to get.

The last thing the planet needs at the moment is more and longer living human beings.

we really need to start thinking about expanding our real estate because if we don't it's gonna bite us in the *** in 50 years.

My biggest problem with the whole cloning issue is the total lack of real understanding of how cloning works among the general public. Most of the people who bring up these huge ethical issues with cloning seem to think it works like they've probably seen a hundre times in sci-fi. You throw someone in a machine, start the clone, and a short time later "Ding!" the clone comes out fully formed and exactly like the original.

Um. A clone is born and grows just like anyone else. If you are 25, and you make a clone of yourself, you'll have to wait 25 years before it looks just like you did when you made the clone. Of course, you'll be 50 then... The whole issue with having "identical" people is nonsense (except in the twins case, which you can certainly do with cloning, but twins occur naturally as well).

The biggest ethical issue with cloning isn't something to do with the original, but with the clone itself. Research into cloning has shown that there are strands of "extra" bits of DNA that seems to be related to our lifespan. Over your lifetime, these bits slowly break off. Clones start with exact copies of that DNA, which means that they seem to have shorter lifespans. Until that's overcome, making a human clone would seem to be out of the question since you'd be condemning that human to a shorter life then normal.

One can argue though that without cloning, we'd never have stumbled upon that phenomena (and we still don't have enough data to be sure how significant it is). It's entirely possible that gaining an understanding of this will allow us to potentially turn back the biological clock on living humans. If we have to figure out a way to graft fresh bits on the end of those strands to make clones have normal lifeclocks, then we could potentially do that to fully grown people as well. Probably wouldn't prevent you from dying of old age (organ deterioration really), but could potentially prevent the body from triggering certain age related actions (like balding for example, but there are many many others). One could look and feel young right up until the day their heart/liver/kidney/whatever gave out.


And that's just one of the potential benefits we're getting, not from cloning itself, but from studing the field. Stem cells are another side bit of knowledge. That's *also* an area that can give us huge leaps in biological manipulation. The aforementioned people? With stem cells we could potentially grow them new organs to replace the ones they have as they start to fail.

Right now, stem cells represents the biggest quandry with regards to cloning and research in general. They can only really be harvested from embryos. Lots of people have ethical problems with creating a new life to have it only serve as a farm for stem cells. But I think that not researching further will make things worse, not better. Right now, if some doctors want some stem cells, they essentially have to pay a woman who's planning to have an abortion anyway for the cells. Down the line, if this research pans out, but we don't continue researching cloning techniques (and bio-manipulation in general), you can bet that there'll be offshores clinics where they don't just pay women who'd have an abortion anyway, but who will actually pay women to become pregnant specifically so they can take the embryos for research.

If we come up with even one major breakthrough using stem cells the demand for them will almost assure that result. However, if we also research cloning, we can come up with ways to generate stem cells (you don't have to clone whole creatures you know) without creating an actual full embryo. We could create bio-factories that are essentially single organs that replicate and generate stem cells. Those can then be taken and used for a huge number of applications. All without creating anything remotely resembling a human life, thus reducing the ethical issues dramatically.


I haven't heard that many people having issues with skin cells being grown into sheets of skin for burn victims. We do that today. There is *no* reason we can't do that for any organ or collection of cells. We just have to research and figure out how. In this case, further research will prevent the unethical from happening, not the other way around.

But that's just my opinion...

Gbaji I don't know what's happening with stem cell research in the US but the scenario you paint is quite disgusting. Are you sure that's right about using aborted fetuses?

In Australia, we basically use frozen unwanted fetuses from the IVF process. Once a family has the children they want from IVF they can choose to donate the unwanted fetuses to stem cell research instead of having them destroyed. Of course these are just very tiny groups of cells, much smaller than anything that would be aborted, they are at the very very early stage when a woman wouldn't even know she was pregnant.

To further this research there would never be a need to pay women to get pregnant and abort. All that's needed is eggs and sperm to be combined in a lab and frozen, as they do all the time for IVF.

Yes and no. I was actually referring to the IVF you talk about, but there is no reason why they couldn't.

Um. And just to clarify. It's an *embryo*. Not a fetus. Lots of people have confusion there as well (fueled on in part by deliberate misuse of the terms by anti-abortion activists).

An embryo is the first phase of development. It's a fertilized egg, but bears no resemblance to anything at all. It's just a clump of tissue. The reason there's confusion is because the anti-abortion people will show you a picture of a fetus to be more "graphic" about what's being aborted. With the exception of 2nd trimester abortions (done only in cases of health risk in most states in the US), what's aborted is an embryo. Once it's developed into a fetus, it's generally past the age to be aborted.



Yes. But in the US, I don't think doctors are allowed to do that yet (I honestly haven't been following all the laws). My understanding is that an embryo is an embryo is an embryo. I know I read something that talked about harvesting embryos for stem cells as an alternative to flushing them both in IVF and early abortions. I honestly don't know for sure if the latter has actually been done or is being done anywhere. However, it's definately a possibility, and if we don't get some better mechanisms for generating stem cells, then that will likely become the most common way to get them once the first major stem cell breakthrough comes about.

IVF proceedures are expensive, and not many people do them (cause only those with fertility problems would bother, right?). Any woman can fertilize a single egg without requring any special equipment at all. If demand for stem cells reaches a certain level, the value for those embryos *will* make it quite viable to pay a woman to fertilize one for them the old fashioned way. Think about it. You pay a woman for a month of her time (doesn't need to be fertilized long to be harvested). She gets a few thousand dollars for a couple weeks work. You get a fresh batch of stem cells which you can then use to sell miracle cures to the rich. Trust me. If we don't find alternative ways to generate stem cells, the only way to keep up with demand will be exactly that method. I can't think of a single economic alternative.



Yeah. But as I mentioned. It costs a hell of a lot more to do that combination in a lab then inside a woman naturally. Where do you think you're getting the eggs in the first place? You've already got to pay a woman for an egg, right? You're already doing a surgical proceedure to get that egg. Why on earth take the egg out of the womans womb, only to put it in a lab and combine it with sperm there, when you can just impregnate the woman in the lab first and take out the fertilized egg instead of an invertile one?

The reason IVF is used is for women who have a problem concieving. But if you're going to pay a woman anyway, why not pay one that *doesn't* have a problem? Just artificially inseminate her. Wait a few days for the egg to fertilize. And then take out the fertilized egg. Failure rate is vastly lower, and it's actually an easier proceedure. The end result in both cases is identical. A fertilized egg generating stem cells (budding embryo). One requires significant lab work, expense, and has a high failure rate (IVF is not nearly as efficient as a normally fertile woman, it's just better then a normally infertile woman). The other is relatively cheap.

I'm serious here. If I put an add out in the paper tomorrow saying I'll pay single women 5 thousand dollars and give them an all expense paid trip to the bahamas (or some other offshore location where I've set up my lab), and all they have to do is spend one day (on their trip) scheduling the fertilization, one day doing the insemination, then one day harvesting the egg, all on an outpatient basis, exactly how many lines around the block do you think I'll have?

If you don't think that the value of stem cells (and the demand for them) will cause that to happen unless we come up with cheaper ways to generate them in the lab, you are really mistaken. IVF is nice, but it will never keep up with the demand if stem cell products go into production anywhere.

It would make more sense to simply have a woman donate her eggs and then fertilize them after the fact as you need them. You have to harvest the egg/embryo anyway and it's easier to keep a collection of frozen eggs waiting to be fertilized than it is a collection of women in the lounge reading Cosmopolitian and waiting for their number to come up.

Yeah. I mispoke earlier. The issue with IVF is that they fertilize several eggs at once to maximize the chance that one will take. When they get more then one, they flush the rest (ok, they wait for one to "take" in the womb first). That's what I was referring to as aborted embryos in my first post. Not really the right term, but I was leading into the idea of intentional proceedures as opposed to "leftovers" from IVF and got a bit ahead of myself... ;)

Lots of people already have problems with that proceedure. I'm simply implying that if the demand for stem cells increases beyond the amount that can be generated by left overs from IFV proceedures, then they'll have to generate embryos specifically for the stem cells. The logical course would be to use fertile women to create them rather the infertile once, so IVF would not be needed.

I'm not saying what would be "right", but what would economically fill the demand.

I have no ethical objection to cloning per se. Just another human being, and it should be treated exactly as such...assuming it's cloned as a full embryo.

For cloning for "organ harvesting", I also don't have much of a problem, unless the organ in question is a brain. I don't think human livers or spleens should get any rights over cow livers or spleens.

Cloning for purely experimental purposes, then either killing the fetus or using it for growth fodder, I don't have much of a problem with this. I wouldn't do it for personal ethical reasons, but wouldn't enforce that by law. My drawline for rights is at sentience, including normal fetuses and animals, so I wouldn't defend such creatures overmuch. Certainly not by law.

EDIT: Too many cows.

Edited, Tue Jan 25 19:02:23 2005 by Palpitus

Gbaji they don't flush the additional embryos, they freeze them, and the very reason we use those for stem cell research in Australia is because many of them end up just sitting there for years, unwanted.

We have a national ethics committee here that carefully goes over everything in this area. I can assure you that using women to produce embryos for stem cell research would never be permitted.

And anyway, it would be totally unworkable. Artificial insemination is just not that reliable. Send the women off to the Caribbean and they could still be there in 6 months time trying to get pregnant, and enjoying their next pina calada.

Yes there are too many people on this planet, but the birth rates in western nations have fallen way below replacement levels, and we're the ones who can afford IVF so we might as well add cloning onto the list of possibilities.

I don't think their is an ethical issue really but obviously it's the whole 'Playing God' argument which tends to be the main focus and that any attempt to clone a human it could go seriously wrong and cause all sorts of unusual problems never before seen.

Also in the video mentioned in the OP near the end it said that our nearest genetic relatives a type of monkey, I can't remember what it was called but out of 1000 attempts to clone one, none were succesful. Although the video was a few years old and i'm to lazy to look up if anything new has developed.

I also agree with 'organ harvesting' although I think the term itself may make people think about it like it was an evil process. But the research I think is a vital step in Medical science and one that can't be ignored, the potential benefits are huge and I see few drawbacks.


Edited, Wed Jan 26 11:31:50 2005 by TheDave

overpopulation being what it is, even in this world of human mortality, i'd say that we wouldn't exactly be immortal as a race, even if genetic predisposition towards death were overcome. while you might be in GREAT health as a 250 year old man, you're still prone to starvation i'd assume.

Bad. Very bad. We're already a bunch of sinners. Think of what we'd do if we had unlimited time on our hands.



I'm not saying I would decline the offer of imoortality, were it ever tendered to me, not that it will be, working from the assumption that anyone who could make such an offer would also have a clue as to the sort of person I am.