Sheep cloning sparks ethical dilemma

While sending yourself out for pizza may sound appealing, some experts think using biotechnology to clone human beings may be unethical.

The recent cloning of Dolly, the sheep in Scotland, and the cloning of rhesus monkeys here in the United States has forced researchers to look at some of the ethical issues underlying the biotechnology industry.

If rules regarding animal treatment and care are followed as they would be for other animal experimentation, he said, then cloning technology should not require new guidelines.

However, one concern among scientists is biodiversity in the animal population, Frisque said. If too many clones are made of a single sample the diversity of the species is reduced. This could cause the species to become susceptible to the weaknesses the original animal had, he said.

So if one prize animal were cloned a number of times by a farmer and the farmer did not know that the animal was especially vulnerable to a certain disease, Frisque said, the farmer's entire population of that animal could be wiped out.

The diversity in the population may allow some animals to survive a catastrophe that other animals would not be able to adapt to. Experimentation on animals at universities must be approved by IACUC, Frisque said, adding that problems occur when experimentation is moved to the private sector where there may be less control over what experimentation is done.

But while Frisque said he thinks the ethical guidelines for animal cloning are similar to those for other types of animal experimentation, cloning humans is another matter entirely.

"I can't think of any situation where (cloning humans) would be ethical," he said.

Any experiment which involves cloning a human would "probably not be for the benefit of the clone, but instead would be for the benefit of the researcher conducting the experiment," Frisque said.

Esther Siegfried, assistant professor of biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, said there is a fine line between animal and human experiments.

"For myself, I don't think we should apply this to humans. I think I'd be prepared to say that I would support continued, monitored studies on animals," she said. "Splitting embryos is something that has already been done in animal species. But applying it to humans brings up a set of philosophical effects."

Cloning human beings would diminish the value of human life, said Ming Tien, professor of biochemistry.

Tien compares cloning humans to ant and bee colonies where many of the animals are clones. Losing one ant or one bee out of the thousands in the hive would have little consequence because they are all essentially the same. If human beings were to be cloned en masse then it may have a similar effect, he said.

"It would change the definition of an individual human life in a negative way," he said.

If the technology were used to generate many clones it may make racist thoughts easier to propagate, Tien said. During the Vietnam War era sayings like "They all look the same" came to light, he said. These thoughts allowed people to devalue human life and justify racist thoughts. If this technology were to be used, it may make this perception even more common.

Although many people view this technology negatively when applied to humans, Tien said some people may be tempted to still make use of it. Wealthy individuals may be tempted to try to clone themselves. If there is money to be made, there may be groups ready to cash in on it. After all, there are companies that will cryogenically freeze people in an attempt to extend life, he said.

But the issues involved here have been seen before.

This experiment was not the first one that has brought about discussion concerning the ethics of human experimentation, Frisque said. Scientists have been able to make twin embryos by splitting the cells of an embryo after the two-cell stage, effectively creating two entities where before there was only one. The experiment was allowed to continue until the cells reached the 32-cell state, he said.

One reason to do this would be to determine whether the embryo had any genetic defects, Frisque said. If the embryo did have any defects, then the researchers could decide not to use the embryo for implantation, he said.

Ethics of this type of experimentation must be decided upon by our society as a whole, Frisque said. But he said there are already limits on what can be done with human embryonic tissue.

The National Institutes of Health has not funded this type of experimentation with human tissue in the past. Recently though, an NIH ethics panel recommended that some embryo research be funded.

It has been proposed that at day 14 these embryonic cells must not be experimented on any further. Committees are looking at whole lists of issues to decide upon their morality.

"As a society we need to decide if we want taxpayer's money to go to this kind of research," Siegfried said. "I think it's important to have some sort of discussion. These are complicated experiments. Obviously something will go on in Congress."

The United States has not presented the greatest opposition to this technology, Frisque said. Germany and Switzerland have large "Green" movements that are opposed to any type of genetic engineering, he said. A few biotechnology companies have had to move out of those two countries because of opposition to the research.

While the opposition in these countries is strong, Frisque said he believes people in the United States would probably be just as strongly opposed to cloning people.