Scientists, health professionals, and medical researchers have a professional as well as a human interest in ensuring that science, technology, and medicine serve rather than subvert human well-being.
Opinion in the Scientific and Medical Communities
Opposition to reproductive cloning is nearly unanimous in the medical and scientific communities. However, this opposition is often declared to be based primarily on safety considerations. Such a basis for opposition does not provide guidance in the event that the safety considerations are satisfactorily addressed.
Discussion of inheritable genetic modification (IGM)is not as developed within the scientific and medical communities as is the debate about human cloning. Polls suggest that majorities of scientists and health professionals oppose IGM.
A small group of scientists in the United States, including some influential ones, have taken a visible public role as advocates of inheritiable genetic modification. Even fewer scientists have publicly called for IGM to be banned. IGM advocates are seeking to frame the issue as a test of support for scientific freedom, medical progress and reproductive choice.
Among the exceptions is Dr. Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who wrote in the New York Times in September 2000, "While I'm strongly opposed to laws limiting scientific investigation, I would support a ban on modifying the human germline." See [ Resources >> Items >> "In Wake of Genetic Revolution, Questions About Its Meaning" ].
Risks to Human Subjects
The extensive testing and clinical trials that human cloning and IGM would require raise grave considerations about the ethics of experimentation on human subjects, a matter of special concern to scientists and medical researchers.
Human cloning and inheritable genetic modification could not be developed without gravely endangering the altered fetuses and children, and the women who carry and bear them. Since there is little medical justification for these technologies, such procedures would constitute unjustifiable human experimentation.
Developmental biologist Dr. Stuart Newman points out that "no amount of data from laboratory animals will make the first human trials anything but experimental."
Public Confidence in Science and Medicine
Species-altering technologies are opposed by large sectors of the public. Their continued development could erode public trust and confidence in science and medicine.
Related Articles
Many
influential medical and scientific organizations, and prominent
scientists and physicians, have publicly opposed the production of
cloned human beings. An example is:
Rudolph Jaenisch and Ian
Wilmut, "Don't Clone Humans!" Science (Vol. 291, No. 5513,
March 30, 2001)
Resources
>> Items>> "Don't Clone Humans!"
Eric
Lander, "In Wake of Genetic Revolution, Questions About Its
Meaning," The New York Times (September 12, 2000)
Resources
>> Items >> "In Wake of Genetic Revolution, Questions
About Its Meaning"
Off-Site Links
Council for Responsible Genetics (CRG):
- "Cloning Position Paper"
http://www.gene-watch.org/programs/cloning/position.html - "Position Paper on Human Germline Manipulation"
http://www.gene-watch.org/programs/cloning/germline-position.html
Abdallah S. Daar, Halla Thorsteindóttir, Douglas K. Martin, Alyna C.
Smith, Shauna Nast, Peter Singer, "Top Ten Biotechnologies for
Improving Health in Developing Countries," Nature Genetics
(Vol. 32, October 2002), pages 229-232
http://www.utoronto.ca/jcb/_genomics/top10ng.pdf
Peter Shorett, Paul Rabinow, and Paul R. Billings, "The Changing
Norms of the Life Sciences," Nature Biotechnology (Vol. 21,
No. 2, February 2003), pages 123-125
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nbt/journal/v21/n2/full/nbt0203-123.html
Stuart Newman, Testimony before the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions on Human Cloning (March 5, 2002)
http://www.gene-watch.org/programs/cloning/senate-testimony-stuart.html
More Information
Analysis:
Examine the social, cultural, and economic landscape
Policies:
Read about existing and potential regulations
Technologies:
Learn the basic science and consider arguments for and against
Date modified: