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Inevitable By-products of New Medical Discoveries |
| By Randolfe Wicker
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has included a call for banning human cloning worldwide as part of its first set of international guidelines on bioethics and the human genome.
The proposed ban, part of a document titled the "Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights", is being sponsored by 86 countries and will be voted on by the General Assembly during December 1998. Fortunately, this misnamed "declaration" lacks the force of law. Noelie Lenoir, president of the bioethics committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a member of France's highest court, was a key force behind the declaration. Despite giving lip service to "freedom of research and freedom of thought" the guidelines opine "practices which are contrary to human dignity, such as reproductive cloning of human beings, shall not be permitted."
 "It is not 'contrary to human dignity' for normal, healthy children to be born or for disabled people to have families," Attorney Mark Eibert responded. Eibert, a passionate cloning advocate, recently persuaded Northern California's 2,600 member chapter of Resolve, the largest of its national network of support groups for infertile people, to officially endorse cloning once it's perfected as a legitimate option for treating
infertility.
"Repealing reproductive freedom and banning the birth of normal healthy children is what is 'contrary to human dignity'," Eibert emphasized. The same might be said of cloning's implications for same sex reproduction. Heterosexuality's monopoly on reproduction is now obsolete. Lenoir admitted biogenic research as "moving too fast and unpredictably for legislation," noting the recent announcement of experiments claiming to have combined human skin cells with a cow's egg. Left unanswered, however, was the New York Times headline story (November 6, 1998): "Scientists Cultivate Cells at Root of Human Life", which reported on the success by two researchers, each working independently at separate institutions, who for the first time had retrieved and cultivated outside the body the primordial cells at the root of human life. These cells, called "stem cells", were taken from the blastocysts of fertilized eggs and embryos which were due to be discarded. "Because they can divide indefinitely when grown outside the body without signs of age that afflict other cells," the Times reported, "biologists refer to them as immortal." Stem cells exist only briefly after an egg is fertilized. After twenty have developed within the egg a process of differentiation commences transforming nearly all of them into 210 different types of human cells which become irreversibly committed to their fates as specialized components of body tissue. Unlike "immortal" stem cells cultivated outside the body, the 210 varieties of specialized cells become mortal as they become one of the body's mature cell types. Nearly all mature cells lose most of their ability to grow and divide. There are a few exceptions, some like skin and intestinal lining cells can be cultured and divide about fifty times before dying. The possible medical benefits of stem cell cultivation and manipulation are almost incomprehensible. A cure for many degenerative diseases, including AIDS, is now feasible. Even the normal aging process could be slowed down. "Many technical problems remain to be resolved," the New York Times report noted. "The art of directing embryonic cells down specific pathways is in its infancy. But heart muscle cells have been grown from mouse embryonic stem cells and successfully integrated with the heart tissue of a living mouse." The researchers responsible for this latest medical miracle, Dr. James A. Thomson at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and Dr. John Gearhart at Johns Hopkins medical school in Baltimore, Maryland, were privately financed by the Geron Corporation of Menlo Park, California, a biotechnology company that specializes in anti-aging research. What an elixir it must have been at Geron corporate headquarters, a business dedicated to such anti-aging research, to see a front page essay in the New York Times' weekly Science Times section (November 11, 1998) entitled: "Immortality of a Sort, Beckons to Biologists" which continued on to page 2 under the heading: "Experts See Immortality in Endlessly Dividing Cells." Since Geron had funded the research, it had secured exclusive licenses to use the cells, under patents held by the researchers' universities. However, political opposition to anything dealing with embryos appears to be nearly as immortal as, well, the stem cells themselves. Even though the stem cells in both studies were retrieved from embryos destined to be discarded and with the consent of the couples who had created them, the theologians, bioethicists, Right to Life extremists, and other assorted bioLuddites were ready for this newest battle in their fierce Holy War to protect every human embryo on the face of Mother Earth. In 1995, conservatives in the U.S. House of Representatives banned all Federal funding for research involving embryos. This ban has been attached to Congressional appropriations for the last three years. Underlying the new debate over providing Federal funding for this new promising stem cell research are worries that the cloning of human beings would become inevitable. The Times noted that the new cells "may well reawaken fears of human cloning" but reported most experts now believe "human cloning is more likely to end up as a rare treatment offered in fertility clinics, no different from others like in-vitro fertilization and egg donation in that they were first bitterly denounced and are now regarded as routine." Drs. Thomson and Gearhart, the Geron Corporation executives, and even Dr. Michael West who claimed one of his Advanced Cell Technology researchers had successfully inserted some human skin cells into a cow egg and gotten them to divide several times, virtually fell over one another in their rush to declare that they 'HAD NO INTEREST WHATSOEVER IN HUMAN CLONING!" Dr. West, when asked during a speech to NBAC "how he would prevent the technique from being misused, such as in cloning a person, even suggested that the cloning of humans should be made a crime. Dr. West said a patent application had been filed on the human/cow egg process. However, he maintained no further work had been done and that his company had concentrated instead "on the more immediately practical field of cow cloning." Dr. West's announcement was greeted skeptically by some scientists because it had not been documented, duplicated or been published as a study in any scientific journal. But those guardians of the public's morals and welfare, the off balance and overwhelmed by the implications of cultivating stem cells—now faced issues beyond imagining. Dr. West had apparently thrown them a real curve ball, complicating a complex debate even more. Dr. West maintained the human cells had virtually totally taken over the cow's egg and appeared to have started producing human stem cells within it. These cells had been photographed. After scrutinizing those pictures, other scientists said, "they looked like they could indeed be human stem cells." But, they had some grave and serious doubts the cow egg's mitochondria and some cow proteins would certainly remain, thereby creating a human/cow hybrid cell which, however human it might appear to be, would have to be at least part cow. Dr. West argued that the cow egg was a disposable entity, something that could only serve as a temporary incubator for the human-appearing stem cells within. Furthermore, he believed, the mitochondria of the cow's egg would be insufficient to bring the embryo to term. Also, Dr. West noted, the researcher had used his own cells in the experiment, exercising the same rights of personhood he would use in choosing to give himself an injection. "I want to be very open and level with everyone," Dr. West declared in an attempt to explain the reason he had announced his findings. "We need to get the ethicists to talk about it so as to encourage a rational response to these new technologies. "Even though a hybrid would be in the form of cells, not a whole organism," the Times report mused, "the concept of half-human creatures arouses deep-seated anxiety, as is evident from the unfriendly powers ascribed to werewolves, centaurs, mermaids, Minotaurs and other characters of myth and folklore." Indeed, the knotty perplexities of the "mainly human-part-cow" controversy caught President Bill Clinton's attention. He asked his National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) to tackle the issue at its Miami meeting the next week and to report back to him. NBAC responded to the President's concerns, assuring him there was nothing new about cells fused from different eggs. Dr. Shaprio, the president of Princeton University and NBAC's chairman wrote that "if the embryonic cells are not capable of developing into an embryo, then we do not believe that totally new ethical issues arise." Like everyone else, NBAC, which had recommended a ban on the cloning of human beings for several years, ignored the fact that the successful pursuit of medical treatments using stem cells would perfect the techniques of nuclear transfer between cells. "Nuclear transfer" between cells is the basic technique used in cloning. Geron's vice-president listed embryonic stem cells as potential sources for a number of novel treatments during a meeting held by a U.S. Senate committee on December 2, 1998. His projected treatments included the following:
While testimony by any corporate officer or vested interest to a governmental agency is suspected o being self-aggrandizing, Geron's claims received some startling and impressive support. Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health, asked that the Federal Ban on embryo research be lifted so university scientists who receive most of their support from the National Institutes of Health could work with stem cells. "It is not too unrealistic to say that this research has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine," Dr. Varmus testified, "and improve the quality and length of life." No one mentioned one major barrier between stem cell technological promise and its successful application—COMPATABILITY! The easiest and most certain way to get stem cells which could be coaxed into creating tissue which would not be rejected by a patient would involve inserting one of his or her cells into a human egg whose nucleus had been removed and stimulate to commence dividing and producing stem cells. Then those stem cells could be retrieved. If the stem cells were not retrieved and the egg was implanted in a womb, a child conceived through cloning would be on its way. So, voluntarily or not, everyone with heart diseases, AIDS, cancer, diabetes, atherosclarosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, etc., or simply tired of their own rapid rate of aging, has to cheer on those scientists perfecting the very technique that is central to the cloning of humans. While the tidal forces of increasing scientific knowledge and the public's growing awareness of medicine's possibilities seem close to overwhelming the forces of reactionary ignorance, stalwart opponents still stand their ground.
"The language of this ban prevents taxpayer funding for bizarre experiments, such as cloning," Rep. Dickey continued. "Eventually, I could see the embryonic stem cell technology going in this direction." While I personally couldn't disagree more with Rep. Dickey's political views, I feel compelled to give him credit for seeing the obvious.  Randolfe Wicker
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