| Prepared
Witness Testimony The Committee on Energy and Commerce W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, Chairman Issues Raised by Human Cloning Research Dr. Brigitte Boisselie Ph.D.
Chairman Greenwood, How could a baby, not even born yet, have created so much fear around
the world and in this country in the past 4 years? Since the day the announcement of his potential birth was made, all the
possible unfavorable outcomes have been predicted: -
A shortened lifespan due to shorter
telomeres -
A high-risk of birth defect -
A high-probability of not having a soul -
Plagued with insurmountable identity
crises -
A difficult relationship with the “gene”
parent -
The possibility of having been desired
for reasons other than for him. How could a baby generate so much fear, so much disgust, and so much
aversion? Why is he announced as a monster, and why are we, scientists at
CLONAID, regarded as monsters? Why do people only talk about armies of clones, fading copies, and
high-risks of defects when today, there are hundreds of cloned mammals that are alive
and perfectly healthy? The “YUK effect” and the “Defect Syndrome” are terms that are used as a
deterrent and are the result of a collective fear that is constantly fed by
movies, novels, and reports that are hungry for sensationalism. The fact of the
matter is that every time a new theory or a new technique is introduced to the
public it is always scrutinized with the same level of apprehension, following
the so-called “precautionary principle”. This was true for other reproductive
methods, such as: -
artificial insemination -
in vitro fertilization -
the freezing of human embryos -
surrogate motherhood All went through this same “condemnation” phase and, with time, have
come to be accepted techniques. So despite the fact that a large number of people curse this new
technology and condemn cloning, using the same arguments that were used for
previous techniques, despite the fact that they claim ‘this time it’s different
and it’s gone too far’, it is important for society to realize that it will
happen soon regardless. The question is: where. Furthermore, most researchers
agree that it will soon be common practice and likely to be an option at many
fertility clinics. The purpose of my being public about our activities at Clonaid is, and
has always been, to prepare our society for this new science, and to welcome
this little baby. It is, and has always been, about educating people and
reminding them that, unlike nuclear weapons, this pro-life technology does not
represent a threat to the survival of the Human race and that reproductive
cloning is not a new drug nor does it involve any gene modification. This
technique just involves the creation of a new baby, the belated twin of an
individual that has given full consent to the procedure. I think it is important for people to go past their emotions and
examine the rationale behind such a practice. In order to do so, let us examine the harms and the benefits of human
cloning in relation to the people cloned, their families and our society. Benefits related to stem cell research and cloning for organ repair,
organ growth, ageing studies, and cancer studies have been extensively
reported, therefore, I will only concentrate on the benefits of reproductive
cloning. Who wants a cloned baby? For the past few years, and particularly the past 6 to 8 months,
CLONAID has received thousands of requests from individuals or couples who are
eagerly waiting for the public announcement of our success. These individuals
are homosexual couples, individuals without a partner, and mainly infertile
couples who have been through all possible fertility methods and who cannot
have a baby with their own genes except through the cloning method. These
requests are not geographically concentrated, they come from every continent,
every culture, and every religion. The desire to give birth to a child bearing
our genes is probably written in our genes. A huge amount of requests have also been expressed by people who have
lost a child or a close relative. Every day, more and more people are calling
and currently, we are working on cells of a baby who died at 10 months of age. A letter from his father is attached to the present testimony. It calls
to us all and tells us about his motivation, his commitment, and about mine and
the one from scientists at Clonaid. We will do all that is humanely possible to
bring the belated twin of this boy back to life and healthy. If it becomes
impossible to do it in this country, Clonaid will go elsewhere. And if no
country on this planet allows it, we will do it on a boat in international
waters, and we know that the number of people willing to help us will grow
exponentially once they realize that we are only trying to give birth to a
baby. Having the best of death. The belated twin of a dead child will not replace the first one, but it
will be one way to have this unique genetic code express itself again, a first
step towards eternal life. Further steps are needed before we reach that level
but this is one of the most probable outcome of this research. Low success rates. The success rate announced for Dolly was very poor: only one viable
offspring for 29 implantations. However, for the past 4 years, success rates
have greatly increased (as could be expected for a new technology) and the
average success reported in the 2000 publications range from 15 to 20% for
cattle as an example. This means that 15 to 20 % of the implanted embryos
produced healthy offspring. We should recall that the best IVF clinics have a
success rate of 30 to 40 %. We should also recall that, 22 years ago, the
success rate for IVF techniques when it first started was less than 1%. These numbers tell us that, in animal cloning, we have already reached
a level of reproducibility that compares well with human IVF. The reported defects have been different depending on the species
studied. In regards to mouse problems, we should remember that the ones that
showed defects were inbred which means they don't have any genetic diversity in
their genome... each individual human being, on the other hand, is outbred and
has full genetic diversity which makes us very resistant to genetic defects and
abnormalities..... (inbred means: brother-sister mating for many generations
which makes the two copies of all their genes the same, therefore no genetic
diversity). Regarding problems of large offspring observed in cattle, we should
recall that the same defects have been observed in calves resulting from IVF.
These defects have never been observed in humans born through IVF. Clonaid scientists are well-trained and have been perfecting the egg
enucleation and heteronuclear transfer which makes us very confident about the
outcome of this endeavor. Miscarriages are common in pregnancy resulting from IVF but also in
natural reproduction and do not constitute any potential harm to the mothers. - All kinds of problems have been announced for the first test tube
baby, Louisa Brown and she is so normal…. - Identity crises or genetic identity, neither means nor entails
personality identity. The belated twin will have his own identity… And
hopefully will be told how precious life is since the alternate choice for him
would be not to exist. What is best for them, to exist or not? - Too much pressure, too many expectations….Would the belated twin be
expected to behave like his gene donor? Isn’t this what’s already done with children
today in many families. Aren’t they expected to perform as well as dad or even
better than dad? - While we are spending time wondering about this child who is desired
and will be loved and cherished, 13,000 other children are dying every day from
starvation and abuse, sometimes in their own families… Which children should we
be more concerned about? Armies are not created by individuals but by governments…. Among the thousands of couples or individuals who requested to be
cloned, none ever asked to get more than two clones. While it is our basic freedom to reproduce our genes as we want, it is
not acceptable to use the genes of someone who is alive and reproduce them
without his consent. This is common sense and should be regulated. Again, I should emphasize that no one ever came to Clonaid with cells
of famous personalities asking to get a cloned baby with these genes….and
Clonaid does its own sampling to prevent such abuses. Looking at all these
potential harms, I do not see why we should deny scientists the right to
perform these practices nor why we should deny these parents from having the
baby they have dreamed about for so long. During the debate that have been conducted the past years, mysterious
objections have been raised and they really need to be addressed. Playing God, Hubris…. Depending on the cultures and religions, different approaches have been
taken. While Christians, in their majority, believe that we shouldn’t head in
that direction, Buddhists have expressed no concerns and some Jewish Rabbis
have declared that if God has given us the brain to imagine it, then this is
how it’s meant to be. This last attitude is very close to Raelians’, who believe that life on
Earth was the result of the creativity of advanced and brilliant scientists.
These creators were mistaken for Gods in ancient times and today, we ourselves
are on the verge of also becoming creators… or Gods. Is this hubris? I believe
it is only a natural cycle of creations. The same emotional objection was given for most new technologies… It must be painful for identical twins to hear that they are considered
to be unnatural and, therefore, that their existence is morally undesirable.
Centuries ago they were already feared and chased… Both, the World Health Organization and the European Parliament, have
stated that such cloning endeavor would be an offense to human dignity. The definitions of human dignity offered by major ethics dictionaries
didn’t help to explain how cloning would be a violation. If this means, as I understand it, that we shouldn’t treat other people
merely as means to an end but always as ends in themselves, then I assume it
refers to the production of embryos that may or should not be implanted. This
philosophical problem is not unique to human cloning but is also part of the
debate regarding IVF and abortion. If it refers to the parent’s choice to have a cloned child, then I want
to testify how conscious these parents-to-be are. In this process, they
conceive their baby with care, patience, determination and the baby will be one
of the most loved child. Can we say the same for all naturally conceived
children today? I often hear comments such as: “These parents are selfish. They want to
have a child with their genes while there are so many children to adopt”, or
“They want to have the belated twin of a dead son to ease their grief.” First of all, we should remember that life is the most wonderful gift. Now, are we going to have to examine the reasons why parents are having
a child, whatever the reproductive method is used? Do they want it
instinctively or for other reasons such as: they feel like it, they want a
heir, someone to take over their business, someone to help them when they are
old… There are all sorts of selfish reasons that can be involved in the
decision to have a child, whatever technique is used. In his novel “A Brave New World”, Huxley didn’t despise cloning. He
actually described how a state controlled science could produce controlled
individuals who would think the same, act and behave the same. Thus, it is not
cloning that might lead to social harms but rather social structures that allow
any form of reinforced control over people’s thoughts and behaviors by their
rulers. These are the harms I am concerned about, the ones that I suffered from
in France, my country of origin, when I first declared that cloning was right.
As a result of this declaration, I was denied the right to work and the right
to keep the custody of my younger child…. For all
these reasons, and on behalf of the couples who have hopes, on behalf of the
scientists who are told not to proceed, I am respectfully asking you to secure
two basic freedoms: The freedom of scientific enquiry The freedom to make personal reproduction choices. Brigitte Boisselier, Ph.D. Director of Clonaid Clinton, March 25, 2001 March 22, 2001 The honorable James C. Greenwood,
chrm. Dear Chairman Greenwood Who am I and why do I
support human cloning? I am a successful
attorney, a former State Legislator, a current elected official, a husband, a
son, a brother, but most importantly, I am a father. At the age of thirty-eight
I was blessed with a perfect baby boy.
My wife and I were not expecting this miracle; as a matter of fact, I
never even considered having children. The day our son was born was both the
happiest and saddest day of my life. When I looked into our son’s eyes for the
first time, my heart melted, and I knew that he and I were one, and that I
would never be the same, I would be better and happier than I ever had in my
life. Then the doctor informed us that our child had a rare and random heart
defect that would require open heart surgery during the first year of his life.
We were so very concerned and so very sad and worried that our child would have
to undergo such an invasive procedure. Our son grew and
became a very beautiful and seemingly healthy child. He had the deepest blue
eyes; when you looked into them it seemed like you could see eternity. He
always had a smile on his face that stretched from cheek to cheek, with not a
single tooth. When I would come home at the end of the day, he would see me and
stand up in his little support chair and look up at me with that smile and
those blue eyes and reach as if to say “ Daddy, pick me up” I always did and in
my heart I always will. Even though the only word he ever spoke was “dada”. When our son was ten
and one-half months old my wife and I took our angel to a children’s hospital
to have his heart repaired. The Doctors told us he had a ninety-four percent
chance of full recovery. After seventeen days of misery and struggle, with my
wife and I, our family and friends sleeping on the floor beside our child,
praying, crying, our hearts and souls dying; our sweet baby succumbed to the
insult on his body and we lost him. We didn’t know what to
do and I couldn’t accept that it was over for our child, and for the first time
in human history I/ we didn’t accept death as the end. Not since our Lord and
Savior, Jesus Christ, spoke to Lazarus and told him to “come forth” from the
grave has a human being able to bridge the great gulf of death. I hoped and
prayed that my son would be the first; I could do no less for him. He deserves
a chance to live, to grow, to learn, to walk, to talk, go to school, to listen to
music, to drive a car, to make a difference in this world; all these things he
would never have the chance to do if this were the end, because of the failure
of a heart operation with a ninety-four percent success rate. How could this
be, how could a father accept this outcome ? I decided then and
there that I would never give up on my child. I would never stop until I could
give his DNA—his genetic make-up a chance. I knew that we only had one chance;
human cloning. To create a healthy duplicate, a twin of our son. I set out to
make it happen. We saved the appropriate cells from his body, I studied and
read and traveled and wrote letters and called scientists all aver the world.
Sparing no expense or commitment to our child. Finally I met a very
kind and brilliant woman in Albany, New York, Dr. Brigitte Boisselier. I knew
from our first meeting that together we could change the world. Together, we
could make death no longer the grim specter that it is today. That through
cloning we could help humanity live longer and healthier lives, and no longer
would we have to fear death as the end of all things, and for us, cloning is
the second chance at life that our son deserves, that all ten and one-half
month old babies deserve. I must withhold my
identity until after the project is successful. However, our commitment to
human cloning and to duplicating our child is unlimited, whether in the United
States or abroad, we will never quit or give up on our child. Hopefully one day
we can all celebrate our family and friends, my wife and our son, Dr. Brigitte
and the brave new world. Until then, I am Respectfully,
A father, (Dada) The
Committee on Energy and Commerce |