Bio-Science at the Crossroads

The first assumption here seems to be that in order for a human person to have an individual identity, he or she must have a unique genome. The second assumption seems to be that God has ordained that each person have a genome that differs from every other person. The third assumption seems to be that through this genetic technology human beings could accidentally produce two persons with the same identity and, thereby, violate the divine creator’s intentions. On the basis of these scientific and theological assumptions, the ethical conclusion drawn here is this: no cloning. (Ronald Cole-Turner, Human Cloning – Religious Responses)

The first test tube baby (through in vitro fertilization, IVF), Louise Brown, was born on July 25, 1978. It was a great landmark event in the history of bio-science and technology. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was knocking at our doors. Immediately, it raised ethical questions. It was reported by BBC (news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/25/newsid_24 99000/2499000/2499411.stm), “None of the main religions have an official policy on artificial insemination, but the Roman Catholic Church has raised the strongest objection. The Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Gordon Gray said: ‘I have grave misgivings about the possible implications and consequences for the future.’”

Louise Brown grew into a healthy person, held various jobs, married at the age of 25 and got pregnant naturally. Her younger sister, also a test tube baby, also grew normally and got married. According to Daily Mail, October 7, 2006, (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/text/print.html), “In May 1999 Louise’s sister Natalie was the first test tube baby to have a child of her own. Daughter Casey made history and ended fears (that) girls born through IVF treatment would not be able to have healthy children.” Millions of babies have been born since Louise Brown’s birth through IVF. While IVF received its due criticism in its time, it is a fairly well accepted practice now and many couples unable to have children by natural means are benefiting from this technology. Hardly any objections are raised against it now.

A much more prominent landmark in bio-technology occurred in February 1997 when Dolly, the sheep, was successfully cloned at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland. The technique of cloning Dolly as described in Human Cloning – Religious Responses, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner, is as follows:
“The Roslin team removed cells from the udder of a pregnant Finn Dorset ewe, placed them in a culture, and starved them of nutrition for a week until the cells became quiescent – that is, they arrested the normal cycle of cell division, initiating a state akin to hibernation. Second, they took an unfertilized egg, or oocyte, from a Scottish Blackface ewe and removed the nucleus. When removing the nucleus with the DNA, they left the remaining cytoplasm intact. Third, the scientists placed the quiescent cell next to the oocyte, and then they introduced pulses of electric current. The gentle electric shock caused the cells to fuse, and the oocyte cytoplasm accepted the quiescent DNA. A second electric pulse initiated normal cell division. Fourth, after six days of cell division, the merged embryo was implanted into the uterus of another Blackface ewe and brought through pregnancy to birth.”

Dolly was born.

The process was not easy and sure shot. The Roslin scientists succeeded to make only 29 embryos out of 277 tries. “Eight ewes gave birth to five lambs, with all but one dying shortly thereafter. Dolly is the only one to survive.”

Ethics of Human Cloning

After Dolly, human cloning was on the horizon; it became possible, at least in theory, and it seemed that it was only a matter of time. Religious and ethical objections were immediately raised against cloning. If there ever was a time to call science into discipline, it was now. It was widely stated that contrary to the Biblical injunction, man was playing God. Cloning of humans meant that the natural process of insemination and procreation would be made redundant. Man would be creating humans in his own image and according to predetermined specifications.

Impelled by the urgency of this issue, President Bill Clinton described at a press conference in the Oval Office of the White House on March 4, 1997, that cloning was more than mere science. He added (Human Cloning, Ronald Cole-Turner), “Each human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory science. I believe we must respect this profound gift and resist the temptation to replicate ourselves.”

Many theologians and churches called for a total ban on cloning although several of them also recognized the inherent benefits to humankind. The infertile couples who wanted to have babies but were unable to do so would now be able to have their own babies. But there was much more at stake. The sanctity of human birth by natural process, nearly a sacred act, faced a challenge from the bio-science and technology.

Bill Clinton “asked the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) to study the matter and come up with policy recommendations.” One of the recommendations of the NBAC was: “The Commission concludes that at this time it is morally unacceptable for any one in the public or private sector, whether in a research or clinical setting, to attempt to create a child using somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning. We have reached a consensus on this point because current scientific information indicates that this technique is not safe to use in humans at this time…Moreover, in addition to safety concerns, many other serious ethical concerns have been identified which require much more widespread and careful public deliberation before this technology may be used.”

Dilemma Confronting Bio-Science and Bio-Technology

We have come to a stage where we need to consider the question upfront: Do we need to set boundaries and limits for the bio-science? Should we draw a line and say – okay, only thus far and not beyond? This line seems to be the one demarcated by human cloning. But the situation is not as simple as that.

According to a report by the President’s Council on Bioethics, July 2002, (Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Enquiry), “Complicating the national dialogue about human cloning is the isolation in 1998 of human embryonic stem cells, which many scientists believe to hold great promise for understanding and treating many chronic diseases and conditions. Some scientists also believe that stem cells derived from cloned human embryos, produced explicitly for such research, might prove to be uniquely useful for studying many genetic diseases and devising novel therapies.” Stem cell research has opened an entirely new door and many, including theologians, have started differentiating between cloning for producing human babies only (productive cloning) and cloning for research (non-productive, therapeutic cloning). While productive cloning is absolutely no, no, there is evidence of support for therapeutic cloning. But there is no unanimity on these issues. The dilemma created by the isolation of stem cells is aptly described by Brent waters and Ronald Cole-Turner in God and the Embryo (pp. 15, 16) as follows: “We allow abortion for nearly any purpose, and we allow to pay reproductive clinics to create embryos and then destroy them if they are unwanted, but we do not want to sanction the freedom of scientists to create embryos for research or for possible therapy. In doing so, we have created an incoherent body of policies that permits abortion, privatizes and thereby ignores in vitro fertilization, prohibits public funding for embryo research and thereby avoids any federal role in overseeing it, but permits privately funded research to do whatever it wants.”

Science makes progress in the face of controversy and resistance. We need to wait and see what the future holds for bio-science.