Are We Getting Closer To Cloning Human Beings?
Are We Getting Closer To Cloning Human Beings?
They are unlikely pioneers, almost universally scorned and doubted, yet vowing to embark on one of the boldest scientific experiments ever. One is a religious cult that believes in UFOs and aliens whose leaders say they will soon try to clone cells from a recently deceased young child. Another is a maverick physicist who shocked the world when he announced in 1998 his plans to buy property in Japan to establish a cloning laboratory.Three years after the world learned of Dolly, the cloned sheep, no one has taken the dreaded and often-predicted further step, so far as is known, of cloning a star athlete, dictator or even a beloved pet. A two-year, $2.3 million effort in Texas to clone an aging pet border collie named Missy has yet to yield a whimper of success.
But that's not for lack of trying. Groups and individuals far outside the scientific mainstream make no secret that they want to clone people. The religious cult's Clonaid project claims already to have its first paying customers, the parents of a deceased child willing to pay to clone him.
Scientists and ethicists alike, however, say their bigger concern is people-cloning projects that may be going forward without publicity.
And, amid the current wave of enthusiasm for cloning human embryos to obtain versatile ``stem cells'' for repairing the body, some worry that the stage is being set for scientists to slide past social and legal bounds and eventually clone not just embryonic cells but entire human beings.
``I absolutely think there's a bridge being built from one type of cloning to the other,'' said Peter Garretts, a spokesman for MATCH, a British anti-cloning group. ``I think the cloning of humans is an inevitability,'' an opinion that many experts share.
MATCH's anxiety is prompted by the decision of a British government advisory committee that recently called for allowing scientists to create human embryos through a cloning process, in order to obtain embryonic stem cells that could develop into any tissue of the body.
The panel firmly stated that these cloned embryos could be kept for no more than 14 days: They would be discarded after the stem cells were removed. MATCH and other critics are concerned that some unethical scientist might instead place such an embryo into a woman's uterus, where it could develop into a fetus to be born.
But, Dr. Liam Donaldson, Britain's chief medical officer, told the London Observer recently: ``We're not talking about cloning whole human beings; it's abhorrent, it's illegal. And we're not growing whole parts of the body, sitting in the lab growing arms and legs.''
Moreover, the British infertility industry is closely regulated by the government - unlike its U.S. counterpart - and efforts to use the created embryos to initiate a pregnancy would likely be caught, scientists say.
For people concerned about the possibility of human clones, however, there is plenty to keep a nervous eye on.
Even as the Pope last week denounced cloning and embryo research, the UFO-oriented religious group called the Raelian Movement said its cloning project, called Clonaid, would soon try to make a genetic copy of a young child who had died and whose parents were willing to pay the cost of the attempt.
Clonaid, formed in 1997, is based on the group's belief that life on Earth was created by a race of human extraterrestrials using DNA engineering: Jesus himself came into existence through cloning, the Raelians believe.
``I don't think it should cost more than $500,000'' for a clone, Clonaid's scientific director, Brigitte Boisselier, said in a telephone interview.
Referring to the high failure rate of current methods of cloning and that many cloned animals are born with birth defects, Boisselier said, ``You need to be very careful. We have been designing a kind of DNA transfer that wouldn't cause damage to it.''
The unidentified couple who has requested the cloning, she added, ``say they know this will not bring their baby back, but they want to give his DNA a chance to express itself'' in a genetically identical child.
Clonaid has four scientists on its team, but is still seeking an existing lab, or a place to build one, in a country where cloning isn't yet outlawed, she said.
Such countries are becoming harder to find.
This year, Japan moved toward a cloning ban designed to sew up loopholes in existing regulations. The gaps came to light when Richard Seed, a physicist from Chicago, announced in 1998 he had raised financing to buy property in Japan to establish a cloning laboratory.
Seed, who has three Harvard degrees but is not trained in reproductive science, is perhaps the most notorious would-be cloner. Several times after the birth of Dolly, Seed stirred alarm in scientific and legal circles by announcing plans to clone humans - including himself and his wife.
Whether Seed has the expertise and can recruit capable scientists or raise sufficient funding has never been clear, but his announcements forced the scientific community and lawmakers to confront the possibility of human cloning.
Current rumors say the purported financing for his Japanese venture fell through. Last week, he did not return calls to his home.
Perhaps the best-credentialed cloning enthusiast is an Italian infertility expert, Dr. Severino Antinori, who heads an IVF clinic and said he has pioneered legitimate infertility treatments.
In a telephone interview from Rome last week, Antinori said he is experienced in both animal and human reproduction, and wants to offer cloning to men who have no sperm but desire a biologically related child. Italy, however, has a legal ban on human cloning.
``I am very surprised that people in general say no to this,'' said Antinori of the International Associated Research Institute for Human Reproduction. He said he will discuss reproductive cloning with other infertility experts at a meeting in Budapest this month.
Unlike normal reproduction, cloning perpetuates the genetic material of only one individual, not two. Dolly, born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland in 1996, was the first mammal cloned from an adult body cell.
In this type of cloning, the animal's genetic material - the full DNA complement in the nucleus of one cell - is placed into a female individual's egg that has been stripped of all its DNA.
At that point, the experiment that produced Dolly showed that something almost miraculous occurs when an adult cell is successfully cloned: The donor nucleus is ``reprogrammed'' so it is able to generate an entirely new individual from scratch. Rather than having the same genetic age as the animal from which it was duplicated, the nucleus somehow was made young again, as if a clock were rewound. As a result, it became once again fully active in all its genes and capable of developing into an entire individual.
Success in cloning Dolly from an adult ewe has led to similar feats with calves, mice and - most recently - pigs. Monkeys, however, have not yet been cloned from adult cells, nor have dogs or cats.
Following close on the hoofsteps of Dolly's arrival, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order banning federal funding of human cloning. A proposed federal law, however, failed to pass mainly because scientists were concerned it would hamper legitimate research.
Since then, four states - Rhode Island, Michigan, California and Louisiana - have passed cloning bans.
So far, ``it's really universal disapproval of cloning that is preventing scientists from getting involved,'' said Lori Andrews, director of the Institute for Science, Law and Technology at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
Virtually no scientists, politicians or ethicists have a good word to say about cloning human individuals.
George Annas, professor of health law at Boston University, argued that cloning an existing human being ``is replication, not reproduction.'' It threatens human uniqueness, he said, and devalues human life - because the clone would be so much compared to the original person that it would be only a perpetual ``echo'' of another person.
On the other hand, a California lawyer representing infertile people argues that banning cloning interferes with a constitutional right to reproduce.
Mark Eibert challenges the notion that clones would be mere carbon copies, pointing out the identical twins have striking individuality though they are genetically the same. That's because environment and learning also shape personality.
Ultimately, Eibert told a California commission on cloning, the real issue is who decides whether infertile people can reproduce by cloning - the individual or the government?
Beyond the lawyers, there are members of the public who are drawn to the possibilities, not so much to create the next Michael Jordan as to fill an emotional need.
``There's a big interest'' in cloning or related procedures among ``a lot of single women who have not found a partner, or the right partner, and still want a child biologically related to them,'' said Dr. David Keefe, chief of infertility services at New England Medical Center and Women and Infant's Hospital in Providence. In the absence of any proven human cloning method, he said, many of these women desperately want embryos created by couples for IVF but not used, and kept on ice.
Ethicists argue about the merits and morality of human cloning, experts debate whether there really is much interest in cloning people, but for the moment, say Keefe and other specialists, those are moot points. Why? Because the risks of failure and abnormalities are too high, as the animal results show.
``We know nothing about the safety'' of cloning humans, Keefe said. Animal clones have been born with oversized organs and malfunctions, and there is debate about whether clones may prematurely age.
So it's possible that a cloned kid at 5 might develop Alzheimer's or cancer and have symptoms of advanced age.
``Show me one parent'' who would accept that risk in cloning, Keefe said. ``We should assume the worst - because kids are too precious.''
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