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.