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In 1996, when researchers in Scotland created Dolly, a lamb produced from an adult sheep cell, they opened a Pandora’s box of ethical issues about cloning. When the human genome was deciphered a few years later, those issues became even more confounding: Scientists could seriously discuss the possibility of cloning humans or of “designing” supersmart, disease-resistant people. Ideas that not long ago might have been the basis for some B movie now seemed to be realistic possibilities. Scientists, politicians, and religious leaders have squared off in heated debate over how—or even whether—to proceed with experiments that manipulate human genetic material. Some see technology run amok. Others see opportunities for stunning progress. To find out more about the debate, which promises to be with us for years, Context turned to two accomplished biologists with very different views: Lee Silver, a professor in the molecular biology department at Princeton University (www.princeton.edu), has written a book on the subject, Remaking Eden: How Genetic Engineering and Cloning Will Transform the American Family. Silver says biological advances, like all powerful technological developments, shouldn’t be banned just because they could be used for bad or dangerous purposes. If we followed that line of thinking, he argues, we would never have started to use fire. Stuart Newman, a professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College (www.nymc.edu), fears what will come from experimentation. He warns that first-generation attempts at genetic manipulation could lead to the manufacture of some strange people. He also envisions those manufactured people becoming viewed as physical property. Their discussion breaks into three related issues. First is reproductive cloning, in which the intent is to produce a baby who is a genetic replica of another human. Second is therapeutic cloning, which creates embryos in a laboratory that are used to grow tissues and organs for medical purposes. Third is genetic engineering, which could let scientists pick the characteristics of embryos, perhaps ensuring that they develop into extremely intelligent adults who are immune to many diseases. The result of the discussion is hardly a clear answer about whether to clone or not to clone. Still, Silver and Newman make compelling arguments that help frame a debate that is at the core of who we are and what the human race is to be.
STUART NEWMAN: Cloning amounts to a manufacturing technology without precedent in nature. LEE SILVER: Granted. But why should anyone care? NEWMAN: Just this: It is reasonable to ask if we really want to encourage making human embryos through the scientific process of trial and error. You can’t have people saying, “Maybe we’ll come up with something more or less like a person and if it isn’t, we can try again.” Do we even want to use this technology for nonreproductive purposes, to simply make organs and tissues that could be used for therapies? It is a short mental jump from making tissues to producing people. If embryos are made in this bizarre way, we will end up with some very strange manufactured results that are kind of first attempts at people. I don’t think we should do that sort of experimentation on people. SILVER: You are using the “slippery slope” argument. We don’t normally stop using technologies just because somebody might use them for a bad purpose. Meanwhile, a real consequence of not using cloning technology would be the absence of treatments that could potentially save millions of lives. NEWMAN: You also will end up with many other odd situations. Let’s say cloning is done to create replacement tissues for a dying individual. The person isn’t saved, but in his last will and testament he requests that the embryos be used to make another “me.” SILVER: This is extremely far-fetched and ridiculous to talk about. NEWMAN: This isn’t far-fetched at all. I believe many women would step forward to bring persons like their parents into the world. SILVER: Before making outrageous claims like this, you need to talk to infertile people who are really the people who want to use this technology to have a child who has their own genes. Even if all cloning’s kinks were worked out, you would wind up with a baby who had all the same genetic material as the parent but who wasn’t an identical clone in the popular sense of the word. The child would grow up, as all children do, unpredictably. You aren’t going to be able to bring back anybody with this technology. The only generative use I see for this technology, therefore, is for infertile people or for single women who want to have a baby alone and don’t want to take a chance with an unneeded, potentially disease-carrying sperm donor. NEWMAN: You’re right. But religious cults with all sorts of strange agendas still may believe that if they keep their leader going, they will bring about the millennium. Your argument that we shouldn’t regulate cloning is like saying that we shouldn’t have laws against child labor because no rational person would work a child to death. SILVER: My big question is, Why is everybody so worried about cloning, which won’t be used by large numbers of people? I see it being used by prospective parents who want a child and can’t have one through other means. NEWMAN: In my lifetime as a scientist, I have seen lots of things that were in the public domain become private property. Various crops and natural products have been patented. Even the sequences of our genes are covered by patents that can be bought or sold. Until now, one thing has escaped this trend: the creation of human beings. That still is done the old-fashioned way, with the occasional in-vitro fertilization, where you start the process outside the body but with the standard ingredients. Now along comes someone saying, “Why not make embryos that have usefulness?” Maybe that means embryos that are part human and part cow and that some company will patent. Maybe that means producing embryos whose sole function is to generate stem cells that can be grown into tissues and organs that will cure diseases. You may say, “How can you argue with curing diseases?” The problem is that you’re on a pathway to producing manufactured human beings, and those manufactured human beings will be someone’s property. SILVER: If you want to use the word “manufacture” that way, then we already use a baby-manufacturing process. It’s called “ISCI” and is the injection of sperm into an egg. That process has led to the births of many babies. Yet when a baby is born nobody calls the baby a product or a piece of property. You are employing the same kind of scare language used 20 years ago to try to restrict in-vitro fertilization. NEWMAN: But it isn’t just cloning that is an issue. There is genetic engineering, too. Lee, you wrote in a recent book that if experimentation is allowed to progress, and the free market follows its natural course, we will use genetic engineering in ways that eventually will result in different categories of human beings. The categories will be defined by whether the individuals in them had access to “good” genes, and that access will be determined by wealth. There is the dark possibility that a superprivileged race of humans will be created. SILVER: There, you are right. The difference between cloning and genetic engineering is significant. With cloning, you get just what you already had. But genetic engineering could have profound effects. Parents may be able to give their kids genes that protect against cancer and heart disease and all the other diseases. At the same time, parents would seek to prevent obesity, to give the children just the right kind of looks to succeed in the world, and maybe even to improve their children’s mental capabilities. If that happens, people with money will be able to use this technology to have children who, over many generations, could be genetically very different from the children of families that couldn’t afford it. NEWMAN: So what’s your response to that? SILVER: My response is that it would be a terrible outcome. But you can understand parents’ desires. There already is a gene that protects against AIDS; 1% of people have it. There are genes that protect against colon cancer and other kinds of cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Parents will say, “Why can’t I give my kids these genes that other kids have naturally?” What would your response be to that? NEWMAN: My response is the same as my response to cloning. I think that producing embryos that are basically concocted by a little bit of this and a little bit of that is something we shouldn’t do. It might seem unprecedented to say that we are going to close off a whole realm of technology. Yet, 30 years ago, we halted development of supersonic planes like the Concorde in this country because of noise and environmental consequences. We know that science is hit or miss. We also know that technologies are double-edged swords. It is just nuts to say, “Let’s take these research techniques that sometimes look like they might work a little bit in mice and turn the techniques into businesses where people are making cloned human embryos to try out as people.” SILVER: Basically, you are raising two objections. Your first is that cloning and genetic engineering might not work. O.K., then some people lose money. Your second is that the people who are born or are protected from disease because of these techniques aren’t natural; they haven’t happened in evolution. Not everything that happens in evolution is good. Nature screws up on its own and produces mutations all the time. Most aren’t good for us, but they are totally natural. Look, you are a cell biologist. Either embryos are simply a bunch of cells or there is a human spirit there. I don’t see how you can be in the middle; it is one or the other. If embryos are just a bunch of cells, then we should be able to do research on them. NEWMAN: Though I wouldn’t imbue a human embryo with a human spirit, that isn’t the same as saying a human embryo is a negligible item with which we can do anything we want.
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