No, your Blogger didn’t kick the bucket, he only turned a little pail... Thanks to Richard and Rita for filling in over the last fortnight.
Back in time to celebrate a small but significant victory for truth, both scientific and moral, over the ‘great lie at the heart of the cloning debate’ (see earlier Blog).
The cloning lobby is in ignominious retreat from the sneaky little lie that cloning ‘does not create a human embryo’ – the lie that was proposed last year by the International Society for Stem Cell Research, faithfully parroted by certain key scientists, MPs and journalists, and now buried in a hastily dug grave by the Senate cloning inquiry.
Quelle joie, to read in the majority report of the Senate Committee – the bad guys – the admission that the embryo made by cloning would indeed be just the same as an IVF embryo, and no word other than ‘embryo’ is to be used:
3.13 The representatives of Do No Harm tabled at the hearing on Tuesday 25th November an Editorial from Nature which says ’Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a full functional organism’.1 This is exactly what the Lockhart Committee addressed in ensuring that an embryo created by SCNT is encompassed by the definition of embryo.
There is nothing to be happy about in the rest of the majority report - mostly baseless scientific claims and dodgy ethical reasoning - but that one little paragraph of intellectual backdown is a triumph. A triumph for the numerous contributors to the Inquiry – through submissions and testimony - who relentlessly reinforced the truth that cloning creates a living human embryo, nothing less, and who have, to a great extent, defeated the Great Lie.
Now it appears the debate can take place with all Senators in agreement that the ‘entity’ made by cloning is a human embryo. Then they just have to decide the same question they debated in 2002: whether it is ‘morally permissible’, in Sen Patterson’s phrase, to create such embryos solely for research.
The actual opportunity to table the Nature Editorial was provided by an observation by Senator Fierravanti-Wells. She quoted the important admission by Prof Loane Skene earlier in the inquiry that the Lockhart Committee ‘did not shy away’ from calling the cloned embryo an embryo – even though they still, for unexplained reasons of pure prejudice, held it in ethical contempt:
Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS—Senator Webber made some comments about whether this SCNT entity was an embryo or not an embryo. I would like to take you back to what Professor Skene actually said at the hearing on Friday. She stated:
Other people have said to us that what we are talking about today, a somatic cell nuclear transfer embryo, is better not being called an embryo. We did not shy away from calling it an embryo because it is conceivable, as happened with Dolly the sheep, that if that entity were put into a woman, after a lot of care, it could in fact develop into a foetus. So we did call it an embryo. We still regarded it, as many other people did who made submissions to us, as having a different moral status from the embryos that are created in fertility programs.
In short, irrespective of the science, what Professor Skene is saying here is that it does come down to a moral issue. It does come down to the ethics of what this entity really is. We have heard a lot of evidence about the science on both sides. But this is not about adult stem cells versus embryonic stem cells; this is about whether the community is prepared to take that quantum leap, to take that ethical leap… and to go down the route of human cloning, to go down the route of a process that does lead to cloning.
Dr van Gend, I wanted to not only clarify the exchange that was happening but also hear a comment from yourself, and others who may have a comment, in relation to that.
Dr van Gend—This has always been at the heart of the debate. In 2002 the parliament said that you cannot create new embryos for research. There was a ethical roadblock set up on the path of those who want cloning and the only way around that roadblock was to pretend that in fact the cloned embryo is not an embryo.
This has been done by Professor Williamson, for instance, who says, ‘No, because there’s not an egg or a sperm, it’s not an embryo.’ It is an ‘intermediate cellular product’—that is what he said in the Sydney Morning Herald. Dolly the sheep had no sperm, and Dolly the sheep was a living creature. It is superstitious to pretend that because an embryo comes about via different means it is not an embryo when it looks, behaves and grows like an embryo.
I must say I was pleasantly surprised when Professor Skene made that comment because, as you know, she is ethical adviser to the International Society for Stem Cell Research, which is the world’s leading cloning lobby. …last year that very society decreed that we would not call it an embryo, we would call it a different word because it had emotional connotations. I will table this editorial in Nature magazine from July last year. The Nature journal condemned the International Society for Stem Cell Research in a very short editorial called ‘Playing the name game’. It said: Stem-cell biologists should not try to change the definition of the word ‘embryo’. In this very powerful, brief editorial…it said:
Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism, and appearing to deny that fact will not fool diehard opponents of the research. If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral issues by changing the terms of the debate.
That was the obvious strategy of the cloning lobby: change the terms of the debate, say it is not an embryo. I believe that members of this committee will shed light amongst their Senate colleagues that there is no place for name games in our legislative assembly. Call things what they are: a blastocyst embryo, an IVF embryo, a cloning embryo are embryos which can become fully functional organisms.
From that basis of truth, we can then proceed to ask: ‘Will we now do what we did not do in 2002? Will we now agree to create living human embryos solely for their destruction, with the sole intention of exploiting them for research?’ And if we will do that, why? What has changed since Senator Patterson’s magnificent statement of conviction in 2002 when she said: I believe strongly that it is wrong to create human embryos solely for research.
How can anything have changed so dramatically in four years, when the science has not changed? Apart from the Hwang fraud and a dubious paper from Newcastle that has never been confirmed, effectively there has been no demonstrated case of human cloning since 2002. There are embryonic stem cell research papers by the thousands but they go nowhere, because you cannot use them on humans. Nothing has changed in the public attitudes if you look at valid surveys—Swinburne and Sexton Marketing rather than phone polls by biotech groups. And nothing has changed in the ethical position, and I hope Mr Campbell will elaborate on this, that it is simply a violation of human rights to create living human entities, living human members of this species, to destroy them.
CA 112 Senate Tuesday, 24 October 2006 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS
Mr Campbell certainly did elaborate, and one of the most useful insights on the status of the embryo came from Ray, when he explained:
Mr Campbell— The thing about a cloned embryo is that, genetically, it has the human genome. Under the microscope, it looks like a human embryo. Analysed—how is it acting?—it is acting like a human embryo. And you know what? If it was not acting like a human embryo, the scientists would not be interested in it. They need a human embryo that will grow to the blastocyst stage, as a human embryo, to harvest human embryonic stem cells. So it is behaving like a human.
And we know—hypothetically, because it has not been done, but given that it has been done in animals we know—that, placed in a proper environment, the same as an embryo produced by human egg and sperm union, potentially it will grow to be a full human being. That to me seems to be just basic philosophy and science coming together in an appropriate way. That is how we define things: we look at how they behave.
CA 112 Senate Tuesday, 24 October 2006
Mind you, there is a lot of clear teaching still required to overcome the muddle that has been slung around the House by the likes of Mal Washer and Ian MacFarlane. Take, for example, the sincere efforts of Senator Webber to wipe the mud from her eyes, and see that an embryo is an embryo is an embryo…
Senator WEBBER—Can you point out to me where we are saying that we will create human embryos—new egg-sperm embryos—solely for research?
Dr van Gend— …As I explained in my opening remarks, an embryo is an embryo whether it is created by egg and sperm or whether it is created by somatic cell nuclear transfer or whether it is created by parthenogenesis as defined in our existing act, in section 7 in the definitions in the existing Prohibition of Human Cloning Act.
Senator WEBBER—So you are therefore saying to me that an egg-sperm embryo has the same status as an egg with another cell put into it that is not a sperm?
Dr van Gend—They are the same entity. If I hold one in each hand and show them to you or to some expert, you cannot tell which embryo was created by IVF sperm and egg and which embryo was created by somatic cell nuclear transfer. It looks like an embryo. It behaves like an embryo; if you put it in Dolly’s mother, it will grow to a lamb. If it looks like one and acts like one it probably is one.
Senator WEBBER—So therefore if we go down the parthenogenesis route where it is just an egg that it stimulated to the eight-cell development without anything else in it, are you saying that that is an embryo?
Dr van Gend—It is by your definition in the current act a human entity that is developing as an embryo.
Senator WEBBER—It is an egg.
Dr van Gend—It is an embryo. An egg is a cell in a female body that contains half our genetic material. It is a piece of us. An embryo is a self-contained, self-directed living entity that controls its own future. Given the right environment, as the Lockhart review admitted, the cloned embryo can develop as a normal embryo to the foetal and live birth stage. There is no dispute on that. It has not been tried yet [in humans] but it has happened in animals: Dolly the sheep, Matilda the lamb, Snuppy the puppy and so on. The process proposed by this legislation is exactly the same as what created Dolly and the other animals. Therefore you are dealing with a human entity which looks and behaves like an embryo - therefore, it is an embryo. …
Senator WEBBER—So, scientifically, an egg that is stimulated on its own, an egg with another cell implanted in it and an egg with a sperm implanted in it all look exactly the same and I cannot tell the difference at 14 days?
Dr van Gend—Correct. And if you put it in the body of a sheep, it would be born as Dolly the lamb.
CA 103 Senate Tuesday, 24 October 2006 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS
For those who want to read the Senate Committee transcripts, this is the link; there are great moments from scientists like Prof Jack Martin, Alan Mackay-Sim and James Sherley, from moral philosophers like Nick Tonti-Fillipini, Anthony Fisher and Ray Campbell, doctors like Megan Best and Eloise Piercy.
We hope that the truth that has been made clear concerning the humanness of the embryo created by cloning will guide the ethical thinking of our representatives on an issue so profound and so unexplored. As Leon Kass reminded us, “cloning is about nothing less than whether human procreation remains human.” The embryo created by cloning is human in its nature, but excluded from the circle of human belonging and care by its unnatural – its ‘inhuman’ - means of creation. Such an act of exclusion, let alone the act of exploiting the cloned embryo for research, violates the very humanity science should seek to serve.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
"Cloning Advocates Fail to Make the Case for Change"
MEDIA RELEASE 30th October
DO NO HARM! Australians for Ethical Medical Research
www.cloning.org.au
CLONING ADVOCATES FAIL TO MAKE THE CASE FOR CHANGE
“Cloning advocates have failed to make the case for change” said Dr David van Gend, spokesman for DO NO HARM! Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research in response to the tabling of the Senate Community Affairs Committee’s report on proposed legislation to allow human cloning for research.
“The report shows that while some scientists continue to hype up the case for cloning other respected scientists like Emeritus Professor Jack Martin and leading adult stem cell researcher Professor Alan Mackay-Sim have demonstrated that there is no scientific justification for attempting to create human embryo clones as a source for stem cells for either therapies or research,” Dr van Gend said.
“In 2002-03 every parliament in Australia voted unanimously to prohibit the creation of human embryo clones for destructive research. Four States – WA, SA, Tasmania and NSW – and the Howard Government support a continued ban. There is nothing new in this report to justify the Senate abandoning the ethical and principled decision it made in 2002 that we should not create human life in order to destroy it in research”.
“The report does record the tremendous advances being made with adult stem cells, which are ethically acceptable to all Australians, in disease research and use in therapies. Stem cells from human embryo clones can never be used in therapies due to their inherent genetic damage and tendency to form tumors,” Dr van Gend said.
“The radical nature of this Bill is seen in the proposal to allow the creation of human embryos using eggs from aborted baby girls. Amazingly, many supporters of the Patterson bill seem to be unaware of this provision of her bill.
“This is inhuman legislation based on misguided science. In the light of this report we hope the Senate will decisively reject the Patterson cloning bill”.
DO NO HARM! Australians for Ethical Medical Research
www.cloning.org.au
CLONING ADVOCATES FAIL TO MAKE THE CASE FOR CHANGE
“Cloning advocates have failed to make the case for change” said Dr David van Gend, spokesman for DO NO HARM! Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research in response to the tabling of the Senate Community Affairs Committee’s report on proposed legislation to allow human cloning for research.
“The report shows that while some scientists continue to hype up the case for cloning other respected scientists like Emeritus Professor Jack Martin and leading adult stem cell researcher Professor Alan Mackay-Sim have demonstrated that there is no scientific justification for attempting to create human embryo clones as a source for stem cells for either therapies or research,” Dr van Gend said.
“In 2002-03 every parliament in Australia voted unanimously to prohibit the creation of human embryo clones for destructive research. Four States – WA, SA, Tasmania and NSW – and the Howard Government support a continued ban. There is nothing new in this report to justify the Senate abandoning the ethical and principled decision it made in 2002 that we should not create human life in order to destroy it in research”.
“The report does record the tremendous advances being made with adult stem cells, which are ethically acceptable to all Australians, in disease research and use in therapies. Stem cells from human embryo clones can never be used in therapies due to their inherent genetic damage and tendency to form tumors,” Dr van Gend said.
“The radical nature of this Bill is seen in the proposal to allow the creation of human embryos using eggs from aborted baby girls. Amazingly, many supporters of the Patterson bill seem to be unaware of this provision of her bill.
“This is inhuman legislation based on misguided science. In the light of this report we hope the Senate will decisively reject the Patterson cloning bill”.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
POST-DOCTORAL SCIENTISTS WITH PRE-SCHOOL ETHICS
Ed. - this one is too good to miss! Dunno whether to laugh or cry - but read on...
[1] Those who insist that cloned human embryos don’t matter deny the scientific and metaphysical truth that every human embryo is an embryonic human being, entitled by the very fact of being human to recognition of the dignity and worth that belong inherently to all members of the human family.
[2] Professor Alan Trounson, of Melbourne's Monash University, says therapeutic cloning should be allowed in Australia because it is the only way to get embryonic stem cells with a specific disease that can be studied as the condition progresses in the laboratory."This is a very important new approach," Trounson says.
The Age (http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/the-cell-division/2005/09/29/1127804607919.html) September 30, 2005 (All the quotes below are from this article “The Cell Division”.)
[3] “…embryos only have a significance when people want to use them to have a child. When they are created only for the purpose of research, they no longer have the same status", Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University
[4] Caption under photo (two people in wheelchairs) by Pat Scala: Pressing for change: Dr Paul Brock (left) James Shepherd and Joanna Knott argue that each of them would benefit from therapeutic cloning.
[5] “It would be immoral not to lift the ban [on cloning], argues the Australian ethicist Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University.”
[6] "This could save millions of lives." argues the Australian ethicist Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University
[7] “It is permitted in many countries, including Britain, South Korea, Singapore and Sweden.”
[These are rogue states who have reneged on the recent United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning in which the international community solemnly agreed “to protect adequately human life in the application of life sciences” and to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”.]
[8] “Science is like a horse race. The winner can’t be predicted beforehand. You have to let the horses run.”
Professor Julian Savulescu
[9] Dr Kuldip Sidhu, a stem cell researcher at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, says "We've got to be in the race. We don't want a brain drain because of the legislation." Already one of the nation's leading stem cell researchers, Professor Martin Pera, of the Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne, has said he will consider moving to another country if the ban is not lifted because his research would be compromised relative to colleagues overseas.
Guest Blogger Rita Joseph went to the Senate Committee hearings into the Patterson cloning Bill... She argues that pro-cloning scientists exhibit all the self-willed passion and moral immaturity of six-year-olds.
After World War II, Omar Bradley predicted an age of “technological giants and moral pygmies”. True enough: a bunch of scientists today are employing some very stunted moral reasoning in their demand to clone human beings and use these embryonic human beings in lethal research.
When it comes to morality, cloning advocates are arguing like six-year-olds.
Having raised eleven children, I know quite a bit about six-year-olds, their wilful egotism, their flawed reasoning… I know all about their tantrums when they want badly to do something that they are utterly convinced will bring great happiness for themselves and their friends even though it will harm others who, in their eyes, don’t matter.[1]
Yes, these scientists sound very like six-year-olds when told “No, you may not do that”. When they wheedle Parliamentarians for permission, like obstinate children hell-bent on a dangerous new project, they play down the dangers and hype up the alleged benefits.
When told they must abide by that first principle of medical ethics “first do no harm”, they reply with classic “But Mummy…” rationalizations.
You may not harm others, I say, especially the little ones younger than you.
“But Mummy” they reply, “we have to. It is the only way. This is very important, Mummy…”[2]
Yes, darling. But there are other ways. Many good things are being discovered and developed right now, good things that don’t need us to do bad things to other human beings.
But Mummy we only want to harm a very small number of the very smallest kids—no one wants them—they won’t feel a thing—they’re not like us…[3]
No, dear, every single human being is like us, big or small, wanted or unwanted, whether they can feel or not feel. Just being human gives each one of them the same human rights as you and me. This important moral principl was agreed a long time ago. “All human beings are equal in dignity and rights.”
But Mummy it’s only so we can help heaps of other kids who are our friends, kids in wheel chairs, kids with …[4]
No, no. You may not harm some human beings in order to help others. This is another law that all good people agreed long long ago —“The end doesn’t justify the means.”
But Mummy we can get hundreds and hundreds of Very Important People to say that this can be done, that it will truly help our friends…
No darling; no matter how many people you can get to say that it can be done; it is whether it should be done that is the problem. No matter how much good you think it will do the kids you know, it’s still not right to harm little kids you don’t know.
But Mummy, it’s good to help our friends; surely it’s wrong not to do this for them…[5]
Well, you should do everything you can to help your friends, everything except deliberately doing something bad like hurting others much smaller than you and with no Mummy or Daddy to protect them. Remember the littlest kids with no friends have the same right to be helped as the biggest kids with heaps of friends.
But Mummy, what if the good things we can do from harming just a few of these littlest kids is going to make everything heaps better for millions across the whole wide world?[6]
No, my dear, not even then. Once we begin to “use” one human being to “save” other human beings, we are abusing human rights. “You may not do evil even that good may come of it”—another moral principle that good people have agreed for a long time.
But Mummy everybody else is doing it….[7]
No, everybody else is not doing it. Except for a handful of reckless hotheads, everybody else has agreed not to do this bad thing.
But Mummy, the others are going to get in front of us. It’s so unfair, Mummy. You’re making us lose the race.[8]
No, darling, we should not think of this as a race. We have to think about very serious things like this very carefully. It would be wrong to go hurtling down the road running over lots of the littlest ones along the way just because some big people want to be first.
But Mummy it’s not fair! If they can help their friends, why can’t we help ours?
Because there is a much more important kind of help that we must keep in place—not just for our friends but for everyone. In the long run, it is much more important to keep our part of the world working with fairness for everyone. Our moral principles must continue to protect every person, always and everywhere, no matter how young or old, or slow, or poor or unwanted. It is much better that we keep everyone safe, everyone who is sick, everyone in wheel chairs, our littlest human beings and oldest grandmas and grandpas. Everyone must be protected from being harmed or being used to make other people better off.
But Mummy if you don’t let me do what I want, I’ll run away from home. I’ll go to Jack and Jill’s home—their Mummy will let them do it. [9]
That’s fine—go right ahead. But listen to me carefully—no matter what harm other people are allowed to do to smaller ones in other homes—while you’re here in this home, you will live by our rules and our principles.
“But Mummy….”
That’s enough ‘But Mummy’s’. Go and wash your hands and get ready for dinner!
After World War II, Omar Bradley predicted an age of “technological giants and moral pygmies”. True enough: a bunch of scientists today are employing some very stunted moral reasoning in their demand to clone human beings and use these embryonic human beings in lethal research.
When it comes to morality, cloning advocates are arguing like six-year-olds.
Having raised eleven children, I know quite a bit about six-year-olds, their wilful egotism, their flawed reasoning… I know all about their tantrums when they want badly to do something that they are utterly convinced will bring great happiness for themselves and their friends even though it will harm others who, in their eyes, don’t matter.[1]
Yes, these scientists sound very like six-year-olds when told “No, you may not do that”. When they wheedle Parliamentarians for permission, like obstinate children hell-bent on a dangerous new project, they play down the dangers and hype up the alleged benefits.
When told they must abide by that first principle of medical ethics “first do no harm”, they reply with classic “But Mummy…” rationalizations.
You may not harm others, I say, especially the little ones younger than you.
“But Mummy” they reply, “we have to. It is the only way. This is very important, Mummy…”[2]
Yes, darling. But there are other ways. Many good things are being discovered and developed right now, good things that don’t need us to do bad things to other human beings.
But Mummy we only want to harm a very small number of the very smallest kids—no one wants them—they won’t feel a thing—they’re not like us…[3]
No, dear, every single human being is like us, big or small, wanted or unwanted, whether they can feel or not feel. Just being human gives each one of them the same human rights as you and me. This important moral principl was agreed a long time ago. “All human beings are equal in dignity and rights.”
But Mummy it’s only so we can help heaps of other kids who are our friends, kids in wheel chairs, kids with …[4]
No, no. You may not harm some human beings in order to help others. This is another law that all good people agreed long long ago —“The end doesn’t justify the means.”
But Mummy we can get hundreds and hundreds of Very Important People to say that this can be done, that it will truly help our friends…
No darling; no matter how many people you can get to say that it can be done; it is whether it should be done that is the problem. No matter how much good you think it will do the kids you know, it’s still not right to harm little kids you don’t know.
But Mummy, it’s good to help our friends; surely it’s wrong not to do this for them…[5]
Well, you should do everything you can to help your friends, everything except deliberately doing something bad like hurting others much smaller than you and with no Mummy or Daddy to protect them. Remember the littlest kids with no friends have the same right to be helped as the biggest kids with heaps of friends.
But Mummy, what if the good things we can do from harming just a few of these littlest kids is going to make everything heaps better for millions across the whole wide world?[6]
No, my dear, not even then. Once we begin to “use” one human being to “save” other human beings, we are abusing human rights. “You may not do evil even that good may come of it”—another moral principle that good people have agreed for a long time.
But Mummy everybody else is doing it….[7]
No, everybody else is not doing it. Except for a handful of reckless hotheads, everybody else has agreed not to do this bad thing.
But Mummy, the others are going to get in front of us. It’s so unfair, Mummy. You’re making us lose the race.[8]
No, darling, we should not think of this as a race. We have to think about very serious things like this very carefully. It would be wrong to go hurtling down the road running over lots of the littlest ones along the way just because some big people want to be first.
But Mummy it’s not fair! If they can help their friends, why can’t we help ours?
Because there is a much more important kind of help that we must keep in place—not just for our friends but for everyone. In the long run, it is much more important to keep our part of the world working with fairness for everyone. Our moral principles must continue to protect every person, always and everywhere, no matter how young or old, or slow, or poor or unwanted. It is much better that we keep everyone safe, everyone who is sick, everyone in wheel chairs, our littlest human beings and oldest grandmas and grandpas. Everyone must be protected from being harmed or being used to make other people better off.
But Mummy if you don’t let me do what I want, I’ll run away from home. I’ll go to Jack and Jill’s home—their Mummy will let them do it. [9]
That’s fine—go right ahead. But listen to me carefully—no matter what harm other people are allowed to do to smaller ones in other homes—while you’re here in this home, you will live by our rules and our principles.
“But Mummy….”
That’s enough ‘But Mummy’s’. Go and wash your hands and get ready for dinner!
[1] Those who insist that cloned human embryos don’t matter deny the scientific and metaphysical truth that every human embryo is an embryonic human being, entitled by the very fact of being human to recognition of the dignity and worth that belong inherently to all members of the human family.
[2] Professor Alan Trounson, of Melbourne's Monash University, says therapeutic cloning should be allowed in Australia because it is the only way to get embryonic stem cells with a specific disease that can be studied as the condition progresses in the laboratory."This is a very important new approach," Trounson says.
The Age (http://www.theage.com.au/news/general/the-cell-division/2005/09/29/1127804607919.html) September 30, 2005 (All the quotes below are from this article “The Cell Division”.)
[3] “…embryos only have a significance when people want to use them to have a child. When they are created only for the purpose of research, they no longer have the same status", Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University
[4] Caption under photo (two people in wheelchairs) by Pat Scala: Pressing for change: Dr Paul Brock (left) James Shepherd and Joanna Knott argue that each of them would benefit from therapeutic cloning.
[5] “It would be immoral not to lift the ban [on cloning], argues the Australian ethicist Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University.”
[6] "This could save millions of lives." argues the Australian ethicist Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics at Oxford University
[7] “It is permitted in many countries, including Britain, South Korea, Singapore and Sweden.”
[These are rogue states who have reneged on the recent United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning in which the international community solemnly agreed “to protect adequately human life in the application of life sciences” and to “prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life”.]
[8] “Science is like a horse race. The winner can’t be predicted beforehand. You have to let the horses run.”
Professor Julian Savulescu
[9] Dr Kuldip Sidhu, a stem cell researcher at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, says "We've got to be in the race. We don't want a brain drain because of the legislation." Already one of the nation's leading stem cell researchers, Professor Martin Pera, of the Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne, has said he will consider moving to another country if the ban is not lifted because his research would be compromised relative to colleagues overseas.
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Insight and Foursight: Is there gold in them there hills?
This is a guest blog from Richard Egan filling for Dr David Van Gend who is enjoying a well earned break.
As the debate on Kay Patterson’s cloning bill draws closer the pro-cloning lobby are once again pulling out all the stops in their hyped up claims for the promise of therapeutic cloning.
The Insight program on SBS featured paraplegic Brock Turner and a young man, James Shepherd, with juvenile diabetes, making emotional pleas to allow cloning in order that Brock could walk again and James go to sleep at night without the fear of never waking up. Who would dare deny them hope?
Never mind that as, Emeritus Professor Jack Martin, pointed out there has been no proof of concept of the safety and efficacy of therapeutic cloning in any animal model.
Never mind, as James Sherley**, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, who is currently visiting Australia said “The unique feature of embryonic stem cells that allowed them to turn into any cell of the body, known as pluripotency, created a problem when researchers injected them into tissue.
“When you put them in an environment where they can grow and develop, they make lots of different kind of tissues. This tumour formation property is an inherent feature of the cells.
“And all you have to do is simply inject them into an animal tissue – this happens at very high efficiency.
“And although some might say we can solve the tumour problem down the road, that's equivalent to saying we can solve the cancer problem and we may, but that's a long time coming.”
Never mind, as Professor John Burn, medical director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, admitted when pressed on the Insight program, that neither his institute, which holds one of the two British licenses to create human embryo clones, nor anyone else in the world has yet produced a human blastocyst by somatic cell nuclear transfer, let alone derived embryonic stem cells from a human embryo clone.
The same Professor Burn assures us cheerfully that the would-be cloners have “gold nuggets in their pockets” as they come down from there hills!!
Similarly, Dr Graham Mitchell and Sir Gustav Nossal, trading as Foursight Associates Pty Ltd, a company in strategic alliances with JBWere Private Equity Fund, Challenger Biotech Capital Ltd and KPMG Melbourne, claim in their report to Premier Steve Bracks and Victorian Minister for Innovation, John Brumby that: “a broad SCNT approach is required for stem cell-based regenerative medicine to achieve its undoubted promise.”
The Foursight report mentions three hurdles to using embryonic stem cells for therapies. These are (a) transplant rejection; (b) guidance of the ES cells down the correct pathways of differentiation and (c) ensuring that cells of such great proliferative potential do not develop into cancers, even on rare occasions.
The Foursight report breathlessly proposes SCNT (cloning) as the way to overcome the transplant rejection hurdle:
“If transplant rejection is the biggest single concern then this is where the extraordinary, legislatively-constrained technology of SCNT – somatic cell nuclear transfer- comes into its own. Clearly, SCNT has the potential to overcome the transplantation barrier through “personalization” of the ES cells.”
The Foursight report fails to address the other two hurdles or to explain what possible reason there is to lift the legislative ban on cloning now before these hurdles are overcome in animal models. What is the point of being able to do stem cell transplants that won’t be rejected but cannot be reliably differentiated into the required cell types and have a tendency to form cancers?
The Foursight report also glosses over a fourth hurdle, the problem of abnormalities in genetic coding, referring to two papers demonstrating equivalence between mouse ESCs from cloned mice with those from fertilised mice. However, given the very evident problem of abnormal genetic programming that is a feature of reproductive cloning of animals, proof that programming and epigenetic effects do not occur in SCNT-derived cell lines will require much more work than this, including especially study of expression of a very much wider array of genes.
The Foursight report is a brief attachment to a longer report, the Gough report, prepared by Dr. Nicholas Gough of Nick Gough & Associates Pty Ltd, biotechnology consultants with a declared interest of holding options to acquire ordinary shares in the Singaporean stem cell company ES Cell International Pte Ltd.
The Gough report admits that “Whilst generation of personalised ES cells by SCNT for specific patient is a theoretical option, given the high costs and length of time involved, it is unlikely that production of personalised therapeutic tissues by genomic replacement would represent a practical strategy.”
There you have it.
In other words, the hyped up hope being offered to Brock Turner and James Shepherd, of therapies for spinal cord injury and for juvenile diabetes using stem cells derived from human embryo clones made using their own somatic cell nuclei is “not a practical strategy”.
Rather, according to the Gough report, hope lies in producing “a bank of some 150 human ES lines [that] could provide a beneficial match for 25 to 50% of potential recipients in a target population (and a 95% chance of providing a full match for at least 8% of patients”. [Such a bank could be developed under Australia’s existing law only no-one has got ESCs to work safely and efficaciously yet.] Oh, and in other ways, yet to be discovered, of overcoming the transplant rejection hurdle.
There is thus a blatant contradiction between the two parts of this hybrid report that has led Premier Bracks to claim “While there is much to do and the road in curing these diseases is a long one it is clear from this report that our greatest roadblock is our scientists’ inability to perform this work [cloning] in human cells in Australia” and his Minister for Innovation, John Brumby to claim that “SCNT remains the only tool available that can create ‘tailored’ stem cells that would be a genetic match to a patient.”
The Foursight part of the report claims that cloning will overcome the transplant hurdle but the Gough report, whose comprehensive literature review and analysis has informed the views of the Foursight team of Mitchell and Sir Gus, states that “it is unlikely that production of personalised therapeutic tissues by genomic replacement would represent a practical strategy.”
The Gough report really only commends cloning as a means to “allow the generation of ES cells derived from individuals with specific genotypes for dissection of complex multigenic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, motor neurone disease, and others of unknown cause or multigenic origin. The ability to generate specific differentiated progeny cells that express aspects of a disease phenotype from ES cells of defined genotype will be invaluable in dissection of such diseases.”
Minister Brumby picks up on this alternative purpose for cloning – the only “practical” use according to the Gough report – in his statement that “SCNT remains the only tool available that can create ‘tailored’ stem cells that … would help to model diseases for drug discovery.”
This completely ignores the still unanswered and seemingly unanswerable challenge to the would-be cloners from Professor Alan Mackay-Sim at Griffith University in his submission to the Lockhart Review:
“It is often stated that therapeutic cloning will be required to investigate the biology of certain diseases and to find cures for them by studying embryonic stem cells and their progeny derived from the patients… Therapeutic cloning is a long and laborious procedure that will require donor oocytes and will produce an inexact “copy” of the donor because of the handful of mitochondrial genes passed on through the donor egg. An alternative source of stem cells for these important investigations is provided by adult stem cells. In our lab we already have over 40 adult cell lines derived from persons with schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, motor neuron disease, and mitochondrial disease. These are relatively easily obtained, easy to grow in the lab in large numbers and amenable to cell culture studies, gene expression profiling and proteomics analyses. It is probable that such cell lines as these will render therapeutic cloning irrelevant and impractical.”
Mr Bracks has announced that the Victorian Government would convene a Scientific Leaders’ Forum, to be held on Monday October 16, to consider the findings of the report on Scientific Progress in the Embryonic Stem Cell Field. The Premier’s Office has not replied to requests for more details about this Forum. One could no doubt write in advance the script of hype and evasion that the selected invitees will voice in welcoming the report that “there is gold in them there hills”.
** Melbourne blogsters should come and hear James Sherley, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT speak on Cloning and stem cell research: what we are not being told on Thursday, October 12, 5.30 pm at Prince Philip Theatre, University of Melbourne (Architecture Building, 150m west of Campus Gate 3, Swanston St)
Professor Sherley is a graduate of Harvard University. When the Harvard Review Board voted to allow cloning he wrote:
“A defining feature of our humanity is that we also have the capacity to do the same for others whom we do not know. If the hands of members of the Harvard review board were sensitive enough, they could come to know human embryos better. They could feel that the smallest such embryos, like us, are warm to the touch, that they move as they grow, and they breathe just as surely as we do.”
Professor Sherley has been brought to Australia by Doctors Against Cloning. He is visiting Melbourne after three days briefing Senators and MHRs in Canberra.
As the debate on Kay Patterson’s cloning bill draws closer the pro-cloning lobby are once again pulling out all the stops in their hyped up claims for the promise of therapeutic cloning.
The Insight program on SBS featured paraplegic Brock Turner and a young man, James Shepherd, with juvenile diabetes, making emotional pleas to allow cloning in order that Brock could walk again and James go to sleep at night without the fear of never waking up. Who would dare deny them hope?
Never mind that as, Emeritus Professor Jack Martin, pointed out there has been no proof of concept of the safety and efficacy of therapeutic cloning in any animal model.
Never mind, as James Sherley**, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT, who is currently visiting Australia said “The unique feature of embryonic stem cells that allowed them to turn into any cell of the body, known as pluripotency, created a problem when researchers injected them into tissue.
“When you put them in an environment where they can grow and develop, they make lots of different kind of tissues. This tumour formation property is an inherent feature of the cells.
“And all you have to do is simply inject them into an animal tissue – this happens at very high efficiency.
“And although some might say we can solve the tumour problem down the road, that's equivalent to saying we can solve the cancer problem and we may, but that's a long time coming.”
Never mind, as Professor John Burn, medical director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, admitted when pressed on the Insight program, that neither his institute, which holds one of the two British licenses to create human embryo clones, nor anyone else in the world has yet produced a human blastocyst by somatic cell nuclear transfer, let alone derived embryonic stem cells from a human embryo clone.
The same Professor Burn assures us cheerfully that the would-be cloners have “gold nuggets in their pockets” as they come down from there hills!!
Similarly, Dr Graham Mitchell and Sir Gustav Nossal, trading as Foursight Associates Pty Ltd, a company in strategic alliances with JBWere Private Equity Fund, Challenger Biotech Capital Ltd and KPMG Melbourne, claim in their report to Premier Steve Bracks and Victorian Minister for Innovation, John Brumby that: “a broad SCNT approach is required for stem cell-based regenerative medicine to achieve its undoubted promise.”
The Foursight report mentions three hurdles to using embryonic stem cells for therapies. These are (a) transplant rejection; (b) guidance of the ES cells down the correct pathways of differentiation and (c) ensuring that cells of such great proliferative potential do not develop into cancers, even on rare occasions.
The Foursight report breathlessly proposes SCNT (cloning) as the way to overcome the transplant rejection hurdle:
“If transplant rejection is the biggest single concern then this is where the extraordinary, legislatively-constrained technology of SCNT – somatic cell nuclear transfer- comes into its own. Clearly, SCNT has the potential to overcome the transplantation barrier through “personalization” of the ES cells.”
The Foursight report fails to address the other two hurdles or to explain what possible reason there is to lift the legislative ban on cloning now before these hurdles are overcome in animal models. What is the point of being able to do stem cell transplants that won’t be rejected but cannot be reliably differentiated into the required cell types and have a tendency to form cancers?
The Foursight report also glosses over a fourth hurdle, the problem of abnormalities in genetic coding, referring to two papers demonstrating equivalence between mouse ESCs from cloned mice with those from fertilised mice. However, given the very evident problem of abnormal genetic programming that is a feature of reproductive cloning of animals, proof that programming and epigenetic effects do not occur in SCNT-derived cell lines will require much more work than this, including especially study of expression of a very much wider array of genes.
The Foursight report is a brief attachment to a longer report, the Gough report, prepared by Dr. Nicholas Gough of Nick Gough & Associates Pty Ltd, biotechnology consultants with a declared interest of holding options to acquire ordinary shares in the Singaporean stem cell company ES Cell International Pte Ltd.
The Gough report admits that “Whilst generation of personalised ES cells by SCNT for specific patient is a theoretical option, given the high costs and length of time involved, it is unlikely that production of personalised therapeutic tissues by genomic replacement would represent a practical strategy.”
There you have it.
In other words, the hyped up hope being offered to Brock Turner and James Shepherd, of therapies for spinal cord injury and for juvenile diabetes using stem cells derived from human embryo clones made using their own somatic cell nuclei is “not a practical strategy”.
Rather, according to the Gough report, hope lies in producing “a bank of some 150 human ES lines [that] could provide a beneficial match for 25 to 50% of potential recipients in a target population (and a 95% chance of providing a full match for at least 8% of patients”. [Such a bank could be developed under Australia’s existing law only no-one has got ESCs to work safely and efficaciously yet.] Oh, and in other ways, yet to be discovered, of overcoming the transplant rejection hurdle.
There is thus a blatant contradiction between the two parts of this hybrid report that has led Premier Bracks to claim “While there is much to do and the road in curing these diseases is a long one it is clear from this report that our greatest roadblock is our scientists’ inability to perform this work [cloning] in human cells in Australia” and his Minister for Innovation, John Brumby to claim that “SCNT remains the only tool available that can create ‘tailored’ stem cells that would be a genetic match to a patient.”
The Foursight part of the report claims that cloning will overcome the transplant hurdle but the Gough report, whose comprehensive literature review and analysis has informed the views of the Foursight team of Mitchell and Sir Gus, states that “it is unlikely that production of personalised therapeutic tissues by genomic replacement would represent a practical strategy.”
The Gough report really only commends cloning as a means to “allow the generation of ES cells derived from individuals with specific genotypes for dissection of complex multigenic diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, motor neurone disease, and others of unknown cause or multigenic origin. The ability to generate specific differentiated progeny cells that express aspects of a disease phenotype from ES cells of defined genotype will be invaluable in dissection of such diseases.”
Minister Brumby picks up on this alternative purpose for cloning – the only “practical” use according to the Gough report – in his statement that “SCNT remains the only tool available that can create ‘tailored’ stem cells that … would help to model diseases for drug discovery.”
This completely ignores the still unanswered and seemingly unanswerable challenge to the would-be cloners from Professor Alan Mackay-Sim at Griffith University in his submission to the Lockhart Review:
“It is often stated that therapeutic cloning will be required to investigate the biology of certain diseases and to find cures for them by studying embryonic stem cells and their progeny derived from the patients… Therapeutic cloning is a long and laborious procedure that will require donor oocytes and will produce an inexact “copy” of the donor because of the handful of mitochondrial genes passed on through the donor egg. An alternative source of stem cells for these important investigations is provided by adult stem cells. In our lab we already have over 40 adult cell lines derived from persons with schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, motor neuron disease, and mitochondrial disease. These are relatively easily obtained, easy to grow in the lab in large numbers and amenable to cell culture studies, gene expression profiling and proteomics analyses. It is probable that such cell lines as these will render therapeutic cloning irrelevant and impractical.”
Mr Bracks has announced that the Victorian Government would convene a Scientific Leaders’ Forum, to be held on Monday October 16, to consider the findings of the report on Scientific Progress in the Embryonic Stem Cell Field. The Premier’s Office has not replied to requests for more details about this Forum. One could no doubt write in advance the script of hype and evasion that the selected invitees will voice in welcoming the report that “there is gold in them there hills”.
** Melbourne blogsters should come and hear James Sherley, Associate Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT speak on Cloning and stem cell research: what we are not being told on Thursday, October 12, 5.30 pm at Prince Philip Theatre, University of Melbourne (Architecture Building, 150m west of Campus Gate 3, Swanston St)
Professor Sherley is a graduate of Harvard University. When the Harvard Review Board voted to allow cloning he wrote:
“A defining feature of our humanity is that we also have the capacity to do the same for others whom we do not know. If the hands of members of the Harvard review board were sensitive enough, they could come to know human embryos better. They could feel that the smallest such embryos, like us, are warm to the touch, that they move as they grow, and they breathe just as surely as we do.”
Professor Sherley has been brought to Australia by Doctors Against Cloning. He is visiting Melbourne after three days briefing Senators and MHRs in Canberra.
Saturday, October 07, 2006
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE TO LIVE-BIRTH CLONING AND FETUS FARMING
Cloning for research will perfect the technique needed for cloning for live-birth and for fetal organ harvesting. While this will remain illegal, for now, in Australia , live-birth cloning is being attempted overseas and cloned-fetus farming is being promoted in major journals. Further abuses of this sort can only occur if we permit and perfect the first steps in cloning.
It is not responsible to dismiss ‘slippery slope’ arguments as ‘scare-mongering’. The phenomenon of stepwise progression towards a previously unthinkable state of affairs is a commonplace in human history.
This phenomenon is described by Robert Manne as “a slow and subtle transformation of ethical sensibility. Over time we become blind to how we once thought and what we once valued. We become accustomed or attracted to thoughts we would once have found unthinkable.”
In four short years, Senator Patterson has ‘become accustomed or attracted to’ thoughts of therapeutic cloning, which in 2002 she found unthinkable – see the last Blog. Now she is indignant at any thought that her Bill is preparing the way for live-birth cloning – which in her fickle sort of way she currently finds ‘unthinkable’.
Why should her earnest moral rejection of live-birth cloning be taken seriously, given her merry slide in the last 4 years down the preceding stage of the slippery slope?
Let’s face reality: there are already scientists and ethicists defending ‘live-birth’ cloning, and one scientist in the US who has published the claim to have a cloned embryo in the fridge waiting for a surrogate womb.
On the science of live-birth cloning, no less an authority than the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has pointed to the obvious logic of ‘therapeutic’ cloning techniques (SCNT) facilitating later ‘reproductive’ techniques:
“If undertaken, the development of SCNT for such therapeutic purposes, in which embryos are not transferred for pregnancy, is likely to produce knowledge that could be used to achieve reproductive SCNT.” [i]
And on the ‘ethics’ of live-birth cloning, as recently as this year, a Melbourne scientist, D Elsner, wrote in the Journal of Medical Ethics in support of the right to live-birth cloning (which he calls HRC: Human Reproductive Cloning):
“Several scientists have been outspoken in their intent to pursue HRC… A model to be used to determine when it is acceptable to use HRC and other new assisted reproductive technologies, balancing reproductive freedom and safety concerns, is proposed. Justifications underpinning potential applications of HRC are discussed, and it is determined that these are highly analogous to rationalisations used to justify IVF treatment. It is concluded that people wishing to conceive using HRC should have a prima facie negative right to do so.”
Senator Patterson can make all the hand-on-heart assertions she likes that her Bill is not going to further the cause of ‘reproductive’ cloning: her Bill is exactly what is required by those already further down the slippery slope, who do not find ‘reproductive’ cloning unthinkable at all, and who need the OK to perfect the technique of SCNT cloning.
But much worse than live-birth cloning, there are scientists and ethicists defending ‘fetus farming’ - the plan to grow cloned embryos to the fetal stage where we can butcher them for organs for transplant.
Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu has argued that we not only have a duty to clone, but to grow the clones until they are big enough to kill and harvest organs from to overcome the shortage of organ transplant tissue:
“The most publicly justifiable application of human cloning, if there is one at all, is to provide self-compatible cells or tissues for medical use, especially transplantation. Some have argued that this raises no new ethical issues above those raised by any form of embryo experimentation. I argue that this research is less morally problematic than other embryo research. Indeed, it is not merely morally permissible but morally required that we employ cloning to produce embryos or fetuses for the sake of providing cells, tissues or even organs for therapy, followed by abortion of the embryo or fetus.”
Should we clone human beings? Cloning as a source of tissue for transplantation. Julian Savulescu. Journal of Medical Ethics 25.2 (April 1999): p87.
And Dr Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy, New York Medical College, predicted this outcome – the inevitable demand for more offensive experimentation, once the earlier abuses are safely legislated for - before the US Senate Subcommittee on Health, 3/5/2002
“Cloning embryos for producing embryo stem cells will, by failing to deliver on its promises, inevitably lead to calls to extend the life span of clonal embryos so as to permit harvesting developmentally more advanced cells and tissue for research and potential therapies… And once stem cell harvesting from two-month clonal embryos is in place, who could resist the pleas to extend the time frame so that liver and bone marrow could be obtained from six-month clonal fetuses? …This is my prediction… frustration over lack of progress in producing safe and effective therapeutics from embryo stem cells will lead to calls to permit harvesting of embryo germ cells from two to three month clonal embryos…”
And the practical experiments of cloned-fetus farming are being done in animal models – not out of tender concern for the animals’ health and quality of life, but as a model for human cloned-fetus farming.
So in July last year the director of Advanced Cell Technology, Robert Lanza, successfully cloned cow fetuses and aborted them to obtain differentiated liver tissue.[ii] In a press release, Lanza hailed this technology, expressing hope that it would be used “in the future to treat patients with diverse diseases”. He doesn’t mean pet cows, but human patients, therefore needing human cloned fetuses to be created and killed for their organs.
Given that Senator Patterson’s Bill allows for the harvesting of ‘precursor’ cells from aborted fetuses in order to create embryos who will themselves be destroyed in research, is her proposal really much less macabre than the proposal of fetus farming? Allowing an aborted baby girl to be the mother of a cloned embryo who will itself be exploited and destroyed in the lab.
Any Bill that gives the green light to cloning is culpable not only for the intrinsic offense of creating human embryos solely for research, but for making possible these subsequent vicious violations of our humanity.
But no worries: by that time, after a further transformation of sensibility, we will have become ‘accustomed or attracted to thoughts we would once have found unthinkable’. We will have become even less human.
This is our future, if we in Australia support the first steps in human cloning. This generation of legislators would be held responsible for lifting that lid on Pandora’s Box, allowing hideous and inhuman things to come out – or keeping it closed.
[i] American Society for Reproductive Medicine Ethics Committee; "Human somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning)"; Fertility and Sterility 74, 873-876; November 2000
[ii] Robert Lanza et al., "Long-Term Bovine Hematopoietic Engraftment with Clone-Derived Stem Cells," Cloning and Stem Cells 7 (June 2005): 95-106.
It is not responsible to dismiss ‘slippery slope’ arguments as ‘scare-mongering’. The phenomenon of stepwise progression towards a previously unthinkable state of affairs is a commonplace in human history.
This phenomenon is described by Robert Manne as “a slow and subtle transformation of ethical sensibility. Over time we become blind to how we once thought and what we once valued. We become accustomed or attracted to thoughts we would once have found unthinkable.”
In four short years, Senator Patterson has ‘become accustomed or attracted to’ thoughts of therapeutic cloning, which in 2002 she found unthinkable – see the last Blog. Now she is indignant at any thought that her Bill is preparing the way for live-birth cloning – which in her fickle sort of way she currently finds ‘unthinkable’.
Why should her earnest moral rejection of live-birth cloning be taken seriously, given her merry slide in the last 4 years down the preceding stage of the slippery slope?
Let’s face reality: there are already scientists and ethicists defending ‘live-birth’ cloning, and one scientist in the US who has published the claim to have a cloned embryo in the fridge waiting for a surrogate womb.
On the science of live-birth cloning, no less an authority than the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has pointed to the obvious logic of ‘therapeutic’ cloning techniques (SCNT) facilitating later ‘reproductive’ techniques:
“If undertaken, the development of SCNT for such therapeutic purposes, in which embryos are not transferred for pregnancy, is likely to produce knowledge that could be used to achieve reproductive SCNT.” [i]
And on the ‘ethics’ of live-birth cloning, as recently as this year, a Melbourne scientist, D Elsner, wrote in the Journal of Medical Ethics in support of the right to live-birth cloning (which he calls HRC: Human Reproductive Cloning):
“Several scientists have been outspoken in their intent to pursue HRC… A model to be used to determine when it is acceptable to use HRC and other new assisted reproductive technologies, balancing reproductive freedom and safety concerns, is proposed. Justifications underpinning potential applications of HRC are discussed, and it is determined that these are highly analogous to rationalisations used to justify IVF treatment. It is concluded that people wishing to conceive using HRC should have a prima facie negative right to do so.”
Senator Patterson can make all the hand-on-heart assertions she likes that her Bill is not going to further the cause of ‘reproductive’ cloning: her Bill is exactly what is required by those already further down the slippery slope, who do not find ‘reproductive’ cloning unthinkable at all, and who need the OK to perfect the technique of SCNT cloning.
But much worse than live-birth cloning, there are scientists and ethicists defending ‘fetus farming’ - the plan to grow cloned embryos to the fetal stage where we can butcher them for organs for transplant.
Oxford Professor Julian Savulescu has argued that we not only have a duty to clone, but to grow the clones until they are big enough to kill and harvest organs from to overcome the shortage of organ transplant tissue:
“The most publicly justifiable application of human cloning, if there is one at all, is to provide self-compatible cells or tissues for medical use, especially transplantation. Some have argued that this raises no new ethical issues above those raised by any form of embryo experimentation. I argue that this research is less morally problematic than other embryo research. Indeed, it is not merely morally permissible but morally required that we employ cloning to produce embryos or fetuses for the sake of providing cells, tissues or even organs for therapy, followed by abortion of the embryo or fetus.”
Should we clone human beings? Cloning as a source of tissue for transplantation. Julian Savulescu. Journal of Medical Ethics 25.2 (April 1999): p87.
And Dr Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy, New York Medical College, predicted this outcome – the inevitable demand for more offensive experimentation, once the earlier abuses are safely legislated for - before the US Senate Subcommittee on Health, 3/5/2002
“Cloning embryos for producing embryo stem cells will, by failing to deliver on its promises, inevitably lead to calls to extend the life span of clonal embryos so as to permit harvesting developmentally more advanced cells and tissue for research and potential therapies… And once stem cell harvesting from two-month clonal embryos is in place, who could resist the pleas to extend the time frame so that liver and bone marrow could be obtained from six-month clonal fetuses? …This is my prediction… frustration over lack of progress in producing safe and effective therapeutics from embryo stem cells will lead to calls to permit harvesting of embryo germ cells from two to three month clonal embryos…”
And the practical experiments of cloned-fetus farming are being done in animal models – not out of tender concern for the animals’ health and quality of life, but as a model for human cloned-fetus farming.
So in July last year the director of Advanced Cell Technology, Robert Lanza, successfully cloned cow fetuses and aborted them to obtain differentiated liver tissue.[ii] In a press release, Lanza hailed this technology, expressing hope that it would be used “in the future to treat patients with diverse diseases”. He doesn’t mean pet cows, but human patients, therefore needing human cloned fetuses to be created and killed for their organs.
Given that Senator Patterson’s Bill allows for the harvesting of ‘precursor’ cells from aborted fetuses in order to create embryos who will themselves be destroyed in research, is her proposal really much less macabre than the proposal of fetus farming? Allowing an aborted baby girl to be the mother of a cloned embryo who will itself be exploited and destroyed in the lab.
Any Bill that gives the green light to cloning is culpable not only for the intrinsic offense of creating human embryos solely for research, but for making possible these subsequent vicious violations of our humanity.
But no worries: by that time, after a further transformation of sensibility, we will have become ‘accustomed or attracted to thoughts we would once have found unthinkable’. We will have become even less human.
This is our future, if we in Australia support the first steps in human cloning. This generation of legislators would be held responsible for lifting that lid on Pandora’s Box, allowing hideous and inhuman things to come out – or keeping it closed.
[i] American Society for Reproductive Medicine Ethics Committee; "Human somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning)"; Fertility and Sterility 74, 873-876; November 2000
[ii] Robert Lanza et al., "Long-Term Bovine Hematopoietic Engraftment with Clone-Derived Stem Cells," Cloning and Stem Cells 7 (June 2005): 95-106.
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