This staff working paper
was discussed at the Council's January
2002 meeting. It was prepared by staff solely to aid discussion,
and does not represent the official views of the Council or of the
United States Government.
The President has
authorized the Council to look at the scientific, medical, and
ethical issues relating to human cloning as one of its first
priorities. Anticipating the possibility of this assignment and
mindful of the importance of the topic, the Council's staff has
prepared working papers for the Council's first discussions of human
cloning. This is the first of four.
Biotechnology,
Procreation, and the Meaning of Human
Cloning
This working paper, prepared for the first
of our three sessions on human cloning, has three major purposes:
First, it aims to set human cloning in the larger contexts of
biotechnology and human procreation and the bioethical discussions
these subjects have generated. Second, it presents the importance of
human cloning as the first project for the Council. Finally, but
most important, it seeks to articulate the kinds of questions that
might lead to a rich exploration of the meaning of cloning human
beings.
1. Biotechnology and
Human Procreation: A Matter of Moral and Political
Concern. For roughly half a
century, and at an ever-accelerating pace, biomedical science has
been gaining wondrous new knowledge of the workings of living
beings, from small to great. Increasingly, it is providing precise
and sophisticated knowledge of the workings also of the human body
and mind. Such knowledge of how things work often leads to new
technological powers to control or alter these workings, powers
generally sought in order to treat human disease and relieve
suffering. But, once available, powers sought for one purpose are
frequently usable for others. The same technological capacity to
influence and control bodily processes for medical ends may lead
(wittingly or unwittingly) to non-therapeutic uses, including
"enhancements" of normal life processes or even alterations in
"human nature." Moreover, as a result of anticipated knowledge of
genetics and developmental biology, these transforming powers may
soon be able to transmit such alterations to future generations.
Concern over the meaning of acquiring such powers -- both
the promise and the peril -- has attracted scholarly and public
attention. For over thirty years, ethical issues related to
biomedical advance have occupied the growing field of bioethics.
Increasingly, these ethical issues have entered public discussion
and spawned debates about what we should do about them. A growing
number of people sense that something new and momentous is
happening: that the accelerating waves of biotechnical advances
touch deeply on our most human concerns and the things that make us
human; and that the four-centuries-old project for human mastery of
nature may now be, so to speak, coming home, giving man the power to
alter and "master" himself.
One important aspect of human
life already affected by new biotechnologies is human reproduction.
Even before we have seen the potential fruits of the human genome
project, powers to manipulate the origins of human life have been
gathering, the result of the confluence of work in genetics, cell
biology, and developmental biology. Negatively, we have acquired
powers to prevent conception and to block embryo implantation and
gestation. Positively, we have acquired powers to overcome various
forms of infertility, both female and male. Beginning with
techniques of artificial insemination (sperm from husband or donor)
and progressing through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and
intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection, artificial aids to sexual
reproduction have come into standard medical use. In addition, we
are gradually acquiring powers to affect in a deliberate way the
genetic endowment of the next generation. Genetic screening,
amniocentesis to test for genetic disease (and sex of offspring),
and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of in vitro embryos -- as
well as demonstrated abilities to do embryo twinning or to produce
chimeric embryonic hybrids -- have opened possibilities for choosing
(and someday altering) the genetic makeup of the resulting
offspring. The new technologies of laboratory-assisted reproduction
have also opened up possibilities for non-reproductive uses of
nascent human life. The availability of human embryos, produced in
excess in IVF clinics (or produced-to-order by IVF techniques in
research laboratories), has facilitated research on early human
development and has led to the extraction and growth of human
embryonic stem cells, the pluripotent precursor cells that may hold
great promise for future treatment of chronic degenerative diseases.
Finally, we may be on the threshold of a more radical
departure in human procreation: human cloning, the asexual
reproduction of a new human organism that is genetically virtually
identical to an already existing or previously existing organism.
The first successful cloning of a mammal (Dolly the sheep) was
announced in February 1997; since then, cows, mice, pigs, and goats
have also been cloned. Several fertility specialists in the United
States and abroad have announced, to great fanfare, their intention
to clone human beings, and their efforts may already be well under
way. In November 2001, American researchers claimed to have produced
the first cloned human embryo, a being that grew only to a 6-cell
stage before it died. Public concern about the prospect of human
cloning, triggered by the cloning of Dolly, has remained high and
legislative efforts to ban human cloning proceed at home and abroad.
In the United States, six states have banned human cloning. In July
2001, the House of Representatives passed a strict ban on all human
cloning, including the creation of embryonic human clones. President
Bush has expressed his opposition to all human cloning and has
strongly supported the House-passed ban. As of this writing the
Senate has not taken any action on the subject, though at least two
competing bills have been introduced to ban cloning. What to think
and what to do about human cloning and embryo research cloning, or
both, remain topics of lively public discussion and
debate.
2. Human Cloning: The
Importance of Studying It Now
We accept the President's charge to study human cloning and
concur in the view that it is important that we do so as our first
project. With the public debate swirling and with the Senate soon to
consider the matter of a legislative ban, it would be most
irresponsible for the Council to avoid what is today the first
public issue of bioethics on the national agenda. We have an
obligation to be prepared to participate in the discussion, to
clarify the issues, evaluate the arguments, and to offer whatever
help we can.
The subject of cloning is not only timely, it
is also important in itself, and quite apart from the scale on which
it may be practiced. Clonal reproduction represents the first
instance of assisted baby-making in which the genetic endowment of
the resulting (cloned) child would be specifically determined and
known in advance. It may therefore represent a first step toward
normalizing the genetic design of children or, more ambitiously, the
project of eugenic "improvement" of the human race. Bypassing sexual
reproduction, it moves procreation increasingly under artful human
control and perhaps toward a form of manufacture. These facts are
important for the resulting children and their families, as well as
for the society at large: A world that practices human cloning would
seem to be a very different world, perhaps radically different, from
the one we know. It is part of our task to understand whether, how,
and why this is so.
An investigation of human cloning also
provides this Council with an important opportunity to illustrate
how a rich and deep bioethics can and should deal with technological
innovations that implicate our humanity. The most profound issues,
here as elsewhere, go beyond the commonplace and utilitarian
concerns of feasibility, safety, and efficacy.
In addition,
on the policy side, cloning offers a test case for considering
whether public control of biotechnology is possible and desirable,
and by what means and at what cost. The issue has high public
visibility, and public opposition to clonal reproduction is strong.
At the same time, there are keen proponents of research on cloned
human embryos and others who oppose any governmental interference
with the freedom of scientists and biotech companies to conduct such
research.
Human cloning was once before the subject of a
report by a federal bioethics commission, the National Bioethics
Advisory Commission (NBAC), established in 1995. Published in 1997,
Cloning Human Beings declared that attempts "t this time" to
clone a human being were unethical, owing to questions about the
safety of the technique and the likelihood of harm to the resulting
offspring. The NBAC report explored other ethical and social issues
about which it did not reach consensus. About these it recommended
that they be the subject of widespread and continuing deliberation
"in order to further our understanding of the ethical and social
implications of this technology and to enable society to produce
appropriate long-term policies regarding this technology should the
time come when present concerns about safety have been addressed."
In a recent letter to President Bush, dated September 26, 2001, NBAC
Chairman Harold Shapiro listed human cloning among the "Outstanding
Ethical and Public Policy Issues" that the outgoing Commission
believes require serious and sustained attention at the federal
level. He stressed the need to take up again the "ethical, social,
and legal issues associated with human cloning in the event that the
risks to the fetus and mother were someday to be considered
acceptable." Our Council is eager to carry to the next stage the
work that NBAC so ably began.
3. How to Proceed? The Council begins its work on human cloning mindful
of the immediate public policy challenge: the need for a decision
regarding the desirability (or lack thereof) of a legislative ban on
human cloning. We plan in due course to consider the various policy
options and assess their relative merits. But in keeping with our
mission to examine fully and deeply the human and moral significance
of any scientific or technical innovation, we shall begin by
considering the meaning of human cloning, seen especially as an
important challenge to the character of human procreation and its
personal, familial, and social significance. We intend to consider
in the fullest way possible the range of scientific, moral, and
practical questions raised by human cloning: among them, the history
and science of human cloning; the ethical arguments for and against
the creation of cloned human beings; the relationship between
"reproductive" cloning and research cloning (more often called
"therapeutic" cloning); and the question of what is the wisest
public policy. But to properly ground these inquiries and judgments,
we believe that we must start from the human activities or aspects
of our humanity that are at stake or in conflict. We seek to
understand what they are and why we do (or should) care about their
survival.
We suggest that proper points of departure for the
discussion of clonal baby-making (and indeed for many of the new
biomedical technologies) are the character of human procreation, the
character of human freedom, and the goals of biomedical
science.
On the one side, we have various questions connected
with the nature and moral meaning of human procreation and the
relationships and responsibilities connected with it. For it is
human procreation in all its aspects that provides the major human
context for considering proposals to clone a human being. What does
it mean to bring a child into the world, and with what attitude
should we regard its arrival? What is the human difference between
sexual and asexual reproduction and what does this difference mean
for the relation between the generations? What is the significance
of one's origins and one's genetic make-up to who one is and how one
regards oneself, to one's "identity," individuality, and sense of
self? What does it mean if reproductive activities become
increasingly technological and commercialized? May or should one
generation be permitted to design, redesign, "improve," or select in
advance the genetic characteristics of the next generation, and if
so, on the basis of what goals and standards? What is the moral
status of nascent human life, created in the process of trying to
assist human procreation? What does it mean to regard nascent human
life as a natural resource, to be used for the benefit of others?
On the other side, and raising novel challenges to human
procreation, we have the pursuit of two other (and often allied)
human goods. First is freedom: of scientists to inquire, of
technologists to invent, of individuals to reproduce, of
entrepreneurs to invest and make money. Second is the desire to
relieve man’s estate: negatively, to prevent and treat disease and
alleviate suffering; positively, to engineer "improvements" in
heritable human potentialities and capacities. The pursuit of
knowledge and the healing of illness are indeed high human callings.
But what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for their
flourishing? Should those who exercise these various freedoms accept
certain limits? Is the need to find new cures for the sick a moral
imperative that should trump all other goods and values? If not,
what are the moral boundaries that scientists and technologists
should respect as they continue their quests for knowledge and
cures?
The fact that there are deep and fundamental
disagreements about these issues cannot be ignored. There is a need
both for sobriety and for a full hearing of all arguments in this
debate, and it is in this spirit of open inquiry that the Council
shall do its work. But there is also the need for responsible
judgments and policies, and for recognition of the fact that these
are inescapably moral matters, to be decided on not by scientists or
techno-entrepreneurs acting alone but by all of us conversing and
deliberating in the public square. We enter into the discussion of
human cloning guided both by this desire for wisdom and by the need
for prudence.
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