Human Cloning: Science Fiction Lives

 November 27, 2001

During the 1950s, the fad in movies was oversized bugs and animals, sometimes from space, battling the humans for control of Earth. Humans won. For decades, children, and some adults, have enjoyed comic books filled with Superheroes who battle the forces of evil and protect the human race. Science fiction has permeated entertainment from Frankenstein to X-MEN to Jurassic Park I, II, and III. All fantasy, all fiction, but biotech companies aren’t keeping it that way.

Never would America think that such fantasies and science fiction would ever become possible through scientific exploration and biotechnology. Yet, it has. On November 25, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), based in Worcester, Massachusetts, announced that it had successfully cloned a human embryo. There is no doubt that the brave new world is upon us. Science fiction lives.

ACT does not intend to implant the embryo in a woman’s womb. Instead, the biotech company plans to clone embryos and then kill them for their stem cells in the name of "research." The harvested stem cells are ineligible for federally-funded research but that doesn’t matter to ACT.

Michael West, chief executive officer of ACT, claimed, "Scientifically, biologically, the entities we are creating are not an individual. They’re only cellular life. They’re not human life." ACT further attempts to deny the humanity of the cloned embryo by calling it "activated cells." The fact remains that ACT manipulated nature by creating an embryo without the process of fertilization.

The company knows that America is not on their side because the "activated cells" were created to be destroyed. A recent poll found 86 percent of Americans believe that cloning an embryo to kill it is wrong. Cloned or not, embryos deserve human rights or at least better treatment than the eggs of endangered species.

No one should really be shocked by ACT’s announcement. The "accomplishment" was predicted for months. Cloned humans was only a matter of time after the announcement in February 1997 that scientists had made history with Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult body cell.

We should have expected to live science fiction, especially since Dolly was not alone in the cloning farmhouse. In 1995, they announced the arrival of Megan and Morag, Welsh Mountain ewes, cloned from cultured embryo cells. Along with Dolly in 1996, Taffy and Tweed, cloned Welsh Black rams, were cloned from cultured fetal cells. Interestingly, Dolly was not the first cloned sheep; she was sheep number 277. Her fame came from surviving implantation and birth while the others did not.

In "The Second Creation: Dolly and the Age of Biological Control," Keith Campbell and Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute detail their journey in creating Dolly and her farmhouse friends as well as the scientific potential that came with them. However, Wilmut wrote, "Yet, human cloning is very far from Keith’s and my own thoughts and ambitions, and we would rather that no one ever attempted it . . . . the prospect of human cloning causes us grave misgivings." But the technology was out of the farmhouse and the petri dish.

Time and technology were the only obstacles to cloning humans. Scientists craved to know the unknown. A Presidential Directive prevented the use of federal funds for cloning human beings, but Congress never passed a complete ban to stop the private sector from continuing this immoral research. Scientists privately funded through biotech companies saw no reason to stop at animals.

Advanced Cell Technology did not announce how many human embryos were created and destroyed during their experiments. Were mutant embryos created? Why not implant the embryo into a woman’s womb? Or is it more profitable to clone and kill while playing on the heartstrings of the ill by suggesting hopes of cures? Everyone dreams of cures, but we must not cross the ethical line to permit the experimentation and killing of an innocent human being to perhaps benefit another.

Not only is cloning and killing wrong but it is unnecessary. The media have grossly ignored the tremendous scientific achievements in treating patients with adult stems cells. Stem cells from adult tissues, bone marrow, and umbilical cord blood are already used clinically and have proved beneficial in treating brain tumors, cancer, strokes, and other diseases.

On July 31, 2001, the House of Representatives passed the Weldon-Stupak Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 to prohibit all cloning aimed at creating a new human life, including for reproduction or research. While some Members are only calling for a reproductive cloning ban, a complete ban is needed. Without one, the path is clear for embryo farms where biotech companies clone, harvest, kill, sell, and dissect baby body parts. Furthermore, the line between research and reproduction is quite porous. The only way to effectively ban human reproductive cloning is to also ban cloning for experimental research purposes.

The halls of Congress are swarming with high-paid lobbyists for biotech companies who are defending the "right" to clone and kill human embryos in the name of research, and the politicians are listening. If Congress passes a clone-and-kill law, federal law will require for the first time that a life created in a lab must be extinguished.

Science does not have definitive answers to tell us whether clones have souls, whether super humans could be produced, whether Parkinson’s would be cured, or whether cloning makes men unnecessary for procreation. The common answer to every cloning question is "possibly." What is clear is that scientists do not want to be told no, but it is time to do so.

The President has stated that he will sign the House-passed bill to ban human cloning. However, Senate Democrats are holding the bill hostage. Considering the route and rate of science, perhaps by the time the Senators finally debate human cloning, their cloned-frog-human mutants will take over and decide for them.

Miss Cole is a contributing writer for PurePolitics.com and has been a guest on Fox News The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, and Beyond the News, CNN Talk Back Live, ABC's Politically Incorrect, MSNBC, United Radio Network NewsMaker, USA Radio Network, and numerous other programs.