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Mr. Chairman it is an honor to have the opportunity to testify to this committee. I have long hoped
that the Congress would hold hearings on the subject of human cloning and I am very pleased
that Congressman Greenwood, who has long been a leader in protecting the interests of
children and families, has deemed it important to do so.
Will Human Cloning Happen Any Time Soon?
This Committee has deemed it important to meet to discuss human cloning because there is a
strong perception current in our society that human cloning will soon take place. This perception
is fueled by four factors.
There has been progress in the cloning of animals with a number of species now having been
cloned. This makes it seem as if we are moving rapidly and inexorably up the evolutionary
ladder toward the cloning of human beings.
A number of groups and individuals have announced that they intend to try to create human
clones. These announcements lend some urgency to the need to decide what the government
should do about human cloning.
The media has contributed to the perception that human cloning will soon occur with a flurry of
reports and stories, many feeding directly off one another and reinforcing one another about
these pronouncements. The New York Times Magazine, Wired magazine and many other
journals and television programs have stated that human cloning will happen in the very near
future.
And, lastly, there is a very strong belief in our society that science and technology cannot be
controlled. Senators, opinion leaders and editorialists have all been hard at work assuring the
public that once the genie is out of the proverbial bottle there is no way to reign it back in.
Cloning is the genie and Dolly was the bottle. Human cloning must be right behind.
I do believe that it is important to examine the need for regulations concerning human cloning.
My view is that the Federal government should pass legislation declaring a complete moratorium
on all cloning intended to create human beings. I think that this ban should be imposed until
such time as the Food and Drug Administration is convinced that animal studies on many
species including primates shows that human cloning is reasonably safe with a high degree of
probability. I should add that I do not believe there is any reason for the government to take any
action with respect to the cloning of cells, tissues or organs for medical and therapeutic
purposes. But, my reasons for these opinions have nothing to do with the prospect of imminent
human cloning. I do not believe the cloning of human beings is imminent.
While it is true that some animal species have been cloned the ability to successfully clone
animals is severely limited. The failure rate among cloning attempts can best be described as
embryonic and fetal carnage. Of the embryos that make it to birth many are born dead, many
others are deformed and others still severely disabled. The only thing that work to date on
animals convincingly shows is that the cloning of human beings at any time in the next few years
would be completely immoral, unethical and barbaric human experimentation undertaken for no
purpose other than publicity or to be the first to win a race that there is no need to hold--who
can make the first human clone.
Not only does animal work not support the idea that human cloning is just around the corner
neither do the pronouncements of any current group or individual. To date a collection of kooks,
cranks, cultists and con-men have been the sole members of the club announcing that cloning
will soon be used to make a human. No one and I mean no one who has any real expertise in
cloning has made any such statement. No one and I mean no one with any real expertise in
cloning believes that human cloning is imminent. The media has simply got the story wrong.
Human cloning has been irresponsibly hyped using the pronouncements of persons who have
no skills or abilities or track record with respect to cloning to fuel that hype.
In fact, it is just as likely that the successful cloning of a health human being will never occur as
that it will. The biological problems inherent in using 'old'DNA to make new organisms may not
permit the creation of healthy human beings.
The Time For a Moratorium Is Now.
The fact that cloning will not be used any time soon to make human beings does not mean that
this committee should not recommend that Congress enact legislation to insure that the inept
and the irresponsible do not try. On the contrary the primitive nature of cloning technology is
precisely why Congress must act. Congress should act to place a moratorium on cloning until
the FDA is satisfied that animal work provides a reasonable basis for undertaking human trials.
This will clearly send the simple message that until those who know what they are doing can
show that they can clone animals with a reasonable success rate and which are healthy and
vigorous attempts at human cloning will result in severe fines and time in prison.
There are those who will say that any effort at legislation is pointless since the bad guys will not
obey the law and since you cannot reign in technology once it has emerged. Both arguments
are simply poor arguments.
Of course bad people will break the law. But if we adopt the view that we will only pass laws that
everyone will follow at all times then we will have no laws about anything. In one sense laws are
made precisely because there are those who may seek to do immoral things. A tough law
banning human cloning until the FDA states that the technique is safe makes it clear that there is
a price to be paid and a severe for breaking that law. By acting quickly to issue simple and clear
regulations Congress also sends the message to the world that the world's premier scientific and
technological society believes no one anywhere should undertake human cloning without much
more research on animal and cell cloning. This message will ring loud and clear across the
globe--even on the proverbial off-shore islands and remote jungle locations where so many
seem convinced that cloning companies are or will soon begin operation.
Can the law really regulate technology? Of course it can. It already does. In human
experimentation there is a complex set of laws that have worked to limit and restrict various
kinds of inquiries for decades. In the United States embryo research and fetal tissue research
have proceeded at a snail's pace. Work on xenografting has stalled due to regulatory and legal
concerns about safety. The point being that science is no less amenable to control by society
than any other human activity. What is needed is the will to steer and control science and
technology--a will that has been all too often lacking in our society when it comes to genetics
and reproductive technologies.
What Happens If Cloning Is Shown to Be Safe?
Not only will human cloning not occur soon if at all, it will never, even if it is shown to be safe3,
become an important method for creating human beings. There are a number of reasons for my
making this claim. The most important is that when it comes to reproduction human beings will
prefer sex with another to spending a few hours and tens of thousands of dollars at a fertility
clinic. If the choice is sex or a Petri dish bet on sex.
Those who favor allowing human cloning or who want to promote it argue that cloning may still
help some people. Human cloning can be used to bring back deceased loved ones, to allow
some of us to achieve immortality or to solve the chronic shortage of vital organs that results in
so many otherwise preventable deaths.
Cloning can do none of these things. Cloning can no more bring back the dead than can owning
a videotape of a deceased person. Genes do not control our minds and our thoughts. Clones
are people made in an unusual manner. But they will have their own feelings, thoughts, free will
and if you like-- spirits or souls. Replicating a person's genes does not replicate the
environment and the developmental that make the person who they are. It is simply impossible
to step in the gene pool twice.
Evidence that having the same genes does not make us the same person is all around us.
Human clones already exist. They are Even identical twins who have all their genes in common.
Twins also are usually raised in a relatively common environment by the same parents. Yet they
are not identical copies of one another. They do not have the same thoughts and feelings and
do not make the same life-choices and plans.
Specially created human clones will have free will. Clones are simply people made in a never
before seen way. But they are still people who will grow and develop. Bet on this--teenage
human clones will not want to do or be what their parents wish they would any more than any
other teenager born by more conventional means is or does exactly what their parents want
them to do. So you cannot replace a lost child or loved one by cloning. Nor can you be
immortal by cloning yourself any more than you can be literally immortal by having a child.
And making human clones will not solve the organ shortage. The clones will have every right to
consent to having their organs removed, just as you and I do now despite the fact that someone
may well need our kidney or a piece of our liver.
The most poignant claim made on behalf of cloning is that it will help the infertile have children.
But the infertile can already have children through adoption, artificial insemination, and in vitro
fertilization. Sterile men and women, gay men and single mothers have all had children using
current techniques. Cloning would add another type of treatment for infertility but for nearly all of
the infertile it would do nothing more then add a new option. It is not a breakthrough in the
treatment of infertility.
Two Fundamental Problems with Human Cloning
Presume that cloning is safe. Presume too that very few people will want to clone themselves.
Are there still any fundamental moral reasons why cloning a human being would be wrong?
One problem with cloning someone is that they will be made in the biological image of another
person who has lived before them. They will know much about their appearance. This will lead
others to have very strong expectations and reactions to them especially in an appearance
conscious culture such as ours. The clone may find that it is a terrible emotional burden to be a
lookalike of someone who is twenty, thirty, fifty or eighty years older.
And others will have a hard time reacting to the commonality of appearance that clones will have
with their parents. Some will see their former wife or husband reappear as they were in their
youth. Some will find themselves puzzled over how to relate to a family member who looks like
their mother but is actually a sister or a granddaughter.
In addition to these psychosocial issues cloning threatens to rob a person of their future.
Because biology does dictate much about our health and many of our general capacities and
abilities a clone will know much about what lies in store for them. A clone is the unconsenting
subject of the most comprehensive genetic testing possible. While some may be able to adapt
to this many other may find it more than they can bear. Even today many people when given the
choice of knowing the results of a single genetic test prefer not to know for fear that the
knowledge would make their lives hell. What would the impact be of not knowing one genetic
test result but thousands of them on a child or young adult?
Cloning may be something that some persons choose to do. But government may still find that
while it respects the rights of people to reproduce without interference it does not grant the right
to people to use technologies that stand a high risk of creating people who are miserable or
psychologically harmed. Cloning may simply not be good for humans, psychologically,
emotionally or in terms of their own self-esteem and peace of mind.
So the day may come when Congress decides to convert a moratorium on human cloning into a
ban on human cloning. Just as we severely restrict who it is that can serve as a foster parent or
adoptive parent, just as we do not permit parents to do things to their children that traumatize
them, Congress may decide that cloning is simply too risky a technology for making people.
But that day is far off. Today Congress should simply put cloning off-limits. The kooks and the
cultists and the cranks and the con men can find otherways to prey on our fears. The media can
strive to restore some balance to the public's anxiety about human cloning. Scientists can
continue their efforts to use cloning to engineer cells and tissues and animals, which is where
the real value of cloning lies and will always lie. And the ethicists and theologians and thought-leaders can strive to insure that our schools and religious institutions, and state legislatures and
civic organizations are filled with spirited dialogue and debate about where we want human
cloning to go if anywhere when and if it proves safe to try as a way to create a new member of
our species.
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