Pro-Life, Pro-Cloning?
Conservatives’ Ethical Confusion
SOURCE: Wikimedia Commons
“Saving” embryos from destruction through the Human Cloning Ban Act, as conservatives suggest, would neither save them or the women carrying them to term. The above diagram illustrates the process for somatic cell nuclear transfer and the difference between reproductive and theaputic cloning.
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The socially conservative Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J. just launched its new online journal Public Discourse. Already, their Ivory Tower scholars are spinning scientific facts to fit their esoteric philosophical worldview. In the first issue, Professor Robert George of the President’s Council on Bioethics makes a commendably earnest yet regretfully extreme case against abortion and stem cell research in his October 14th commentary. By arguing that cloned embryos should be “saved” by implanting them in a womb he is actually condemning them to a more gruesome death and seriously threatening the health of the surrogate mother.
Professor George believes that life begins at conception and any intentional cessation of an embryo’s development is tantamount to murder. It is difficult to argue with this philosophically consistent, if pragmatically untenable, position. But it is not difficult to dispute the hyperbolic and disingenuous statements that George makes about the efforts of those researchers who support human embryonic stem cell research to ensure any research involving cloned embryos is conducted ethically.
By allowing cloned embryos to survive past the embryonic stage and even be implanted in a womb, he is allowing the embryos to develop into fetuses that will inevitably be miscarried.
George characterizes 2005’s Human Cloning Ban Act as a bill “that would authorize the large-scale industrial production of human embryos for use in biomedical research in which they would be killed.” He argues that the proposed legislation “would effectively require the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage that were produced by cloning. It would make it a federal crime for a woman to save an embryo by agreeing to have the tiny developing human being implanted in her womb so that he or she could be brought to term. This ‘clone and kill’ bill would, if enacted, bring something to America that has heretofore existed only in China—the equivalent of legally mandated abortion. What it bans is not cloning, but allowing the embryonic children produced by cloning to survive.”
Although George’s argument follows logically from his assertion that life begins at conception, the practical implications of his argument result in prospects that are less than life-affirming. By allowing cloned embryos to survive past the embryonic stage and even be implanted in a womb, he is allowing the embryos to develop into fetuses that will inevitably be miscarried. In order to prevent the creation of doomed fetuses and the suffering of possible surrogate mothers under this horrific form of experimentation, human cloning must be banned.
Hence, the intention of the Human Cloning Ban Act of 2005 and the Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Research Protection Act of 2007 is to do just what they say—ban human cloning. Yes, they do allow the cloning of human embryos for the purpose of research, but ban human reproductive cloning. There is a world of difference here, both scientifically and ethically.
Human reproductive cloning would occur if a cloned embryo created by nuclear transfer were placed inside a womb and allowed to develop into a cloned baby. This is a universally condemned practice. The implantation and gestation of cloned embryos would undoubtedly lead to miscarriages, birth defects, and severe health consequences for the surrogate mother. That is why the Human Cloning Ban Act defines human cloning as “implanting or attempting to implant the product of nuclear transplantation into a uterus or the functional equivalent of a uterus.”
This is a separate and distinct practice from research conducted on cloned embryos. Indeed, this kind of research would be a useful way of learning how to personalize regenerative medicine. If stem cells are extracted from a cloned embryo, a patient would have access to a supply of genetically matched cells for therapy or transplantation. Additionally, research on cloned embryos would generate valuable information about individual differences in developmental biology.
George, however, calls embryo cloning “large-scale industrial production of human embryos.” This description conjures up images of giant factories where tiny humans are cranked-out by the thousands on conveyor belts. This could not be farther from the truth. Embryos are cloned by the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer. In this process, the patient’s genome is extracted from one of the patient’s somatic cells, such as a skin cell, and is implanted in an egg that has had its DNA removed. The egg is then zapped with electricity and commences cellular division.
So far, this process has had only limited success. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology was able to get the embryos past the 8-to-16 cell stage and form blastocysts, but no one has been able to extract stem cells from the cloned embryos. Scientists are doing all they can to sustain these clumps of cells for a little while longer so they can extract stem cells or carry out other forms of embryo research. A law against human cloning would be desirable so that researchers would be required to stop short of allowing these cells to develop the first indications of nervous systems— i.e. the first indications of sentient personhood—whether inside or outside the womb.
Indeed, both bills are influenced not just by a fear of human reproductive cloning but also by a 24-year consensus on how to balance the need to conduct life-enhancing research while also protecting nascent human life. In 1984, the British government’s Warnock Committee came up with a “14-day rule” for embryo research. This meant that embryos created through in vitro fertilization could not be kept alive or used for research after they underwent 14 days of cellular division. At that point, the embryo either had to be implanted in a womb or allowed to die naturally—the reason being that after 14 days the embryo begins to form the primitive streak, a band of cells from which the embryo develops a nervous system.
With the formation of the nervous system, the embryo has taken the first step towards becoming a sentient human being. Since it is a violation of human autonomy and freedom to hold a sentient person captive in order to experiment on it without its consent, the embryo must be allowed to die naturally before it becomes sentient or be implanted in a womb so that it can grow as a free sentient person. The United States does not have this type of 14-day rule in place because of its outright ban on federally funded embryo-harming research known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment. The Human Cloning Ban Act, however, is a step toward this type of sensible regulation.
It is important to bear in mind that the Warnock Committee was not considering cloned embryos, but merely embryos created through in vitro fertilization. These embryos could still be implanted in a womb since they would simply lead to a normal pregnancy. The Human Cloning Ban Act of 2005 prohibits the implantation of cloned embryos in a uterus or functional equivalent, which (if research into animal cloning indicates anything) would not lead to a normal pregnancy or the growth of a normal human being. The 2007 bill goes a step further by also explicitly including a 14-day rule as well as other protections for fertilized embryos and their donors without hindering research.
George grossly exaggerates the implications of the Human Cloning Ban Act by saying that it would “require the killing of human beings in the embryonic stage.” The cloned embryo would simply be prevented from developing sentience or being placed inside a woman’s body where it would most likely be miscarried. It is an unfortunate prospect, but what is the alternative? No one would be “saving” the embryo; one would simply be postponing the inevitable, making it more gruesome, and involving another person (the surrogate mother) in the process.
Theoretically, the embryo could be saved if scientists could figure out a way to successfully bring clones to term, but that procedure could only be perfected through many rounds of horrific experimentation. To be against the destruction of cloned embryos before they become sentient is to be in favor of allowing women to become incubators for an indisputably grotesque experiment. Although George maintains his pro-life philosophical consistency by asking scientists to do all they can to keep cloned embryos alive as long as possible, his position becomes pragmatically untenable since he is asking that the clone’s inevitable demise take a more horrific form.
Michael Rugnetta is a research assistant at the Center for American Progress and a contributor to Science Progress.
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