Human Cloning

Cloning, defined according to STEADMAN’S MEDICAL DICTIONARY, 24th edition, page 289, is: “The transplantation of a nucleus from a somatic cell to an ovum, which then develops into an embryo; many identical embryos could thus be reproduced by asexual reproduction.”

Higher mammal cloning attempts have been costly and difficult, however, human cloning does represent a challenge that has never been faced before by society, and this challenge needs truthful airing, before the science is applied broadly for any and all medical marvels which may be implied from the techniques. The term ‘cloning’ may also be used to identify the process whereby only molecules are reproduced, such as DNA, as when criminologists replicate the DNA of a victim or a criminal, for molecular matching purposes; or used to describe research biologists reproducing a nearly limitless supply of a specially engineered micro-organism.

Michael Shermer, writing in his column, ‘Skeptic’, in the April 2003 edition of Scientific American magazine, offers Three Laws of Cloning: 1. A human clone is a human being no less unique in his or her personhood than an identical twin; 2. A human clone has all the rights and privileges that accompany this legal and moral status; 3. A human clone is to be accorded the dignity and respect due any member of our species.

Hold on now! Isn’t the cart before the horse? … Mister Shermer’s three laws don’t address the ‘when’ in a clone’s assumption of rights. When is the clone to be considered an individual human so that the laws can be applied from that day forward? The answer to that question may be both a scientific as well as a moral question, but our modern society is not ready to address those questions until the full truth about human cloning is revealed.

Some uses of cloning are actually cannibalism dressed up to seem like enlightened medical advances. Isn’t conceiving ‘designer’ individual humans, then killing those individuals to get their body parts for medical treatments, in actuality cannibalism?

It’s not a stretch to say that the acceptance of in vitro fertilization has propelled us down the slippery slope of dehumanizing the earliest age in the continuum of individual human beings, manipulating the amazing processes of conception and life support in order to assist in pregnancy. This earlier medical marvel often creates ‘extra individual embryonic human lives’ to be discarded, or worse, used for experimentation. Should we deconstruct such a beautiful gift by taking full technological advantage of it? Scientists involved with cloning share different viewpoints about this god-like ability we’ve developed. Many find it highly unethical, while others find moralizing the sanctity of individual human life to be only amusing.

Robert Gilmore McKinnell, a professor of genetics and cell biology, wrote that, ‘’Scientists use the cloning procedure to gain insight into biological phenomena such as differentiation, cancer, immunobiology, and aging.” [So far, so good, but the genie is not so benign when the issue of human ‘therapeutic’ cloning arises.]

The life level of that which is cloned is important to understand: a whole organism may be cloned, or only the DNA found in a part of the organism may be cloned.

With DNA cloning, the tissues need not be alive in order to harvest and replicate, or clone, the DNA of the tissue. Such molecular level cloning (called PCR) does not clone an individual (the whole organism), merely the molecular identification of the individual organism. Put another way, the term ‘cloning’ can be used to describe replicating the DNA of alive or dead tissue being tested, as with techniques used in criminology.

When criminologists do DNA replication, they are reproducing a nearly unlimited supply of the exact DNA within the tissue found at the crime scene, in order to match that DNA to the DNA of a criminal or a victim, or exonerate an accused. When Laci Peterson’s body and the body of baby Connor (found in the same waters) were tested with DNA marker technology, the goal was to discover a close DNA identification between Laci Peterson’s body, the body of the baby, and Scott Peterson’s DNA, to connect them through DNA matches, for criminal inferences.

Cloning of bacteria and fungi is used to identify characteristics of the microorganism, to amplify good characteristics or eliminate bad characteristics produced by the DNA commands on the organism’s growth and development. DNA replication and testing can identify what about a microorganism gives that particular organism the disease causing power it has in humans, in order to devise treatments for the diseases.

In modern Embryology textbooks, you will discover that the first principle of the Science of Embryology is that ‘every individual life is a continuum of unbroken processes whereby an individual alive organism is expressing its life, and that continuum has a beginning, a starting point that is that individual’s conception.’

Manipulations such as in vitro fertilization, somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning), embryonic stem cell research, amniocentesis, and tests for genetic anomalies like Downs Syndrome, all are based upon this ‘first principle’ of Embryology. For these processes to have meaning, first the scientists and technicians must hold that the processes are dealing with an already alive individual’s characteristics, else the tests would be too non-specific to form medical assumptions regarding the alive individual organism tested.

Human whole organism cloning is accomplished by ‘somatic cell nuclear transfer’, taking a living cell from a donor human, removing the nuclear material--the DNA/genes--and inserting that nuclear material into an ‘enucleated’ (nuclear material removed) female gamete, or sex cell, ovum, then zapping that combination with an electrical charge that stimulates cellular replication, expressing an individual human organism. The female ovum from which the 23 chromosome nuclear material has been removed, receives the 46 chromosome nuclear material for a ‘complete human organism’, thus the newly conceived individual life has the theoretical ability to then go through the entire series of cellular divisions (mitosis) which give rise to the amniotic sac and the growing individual human body, complete with all the normal organs and tissues.

‘Reproductive cloning’ conceives via somatic cell nuclear transfer and sustains that individual being all the way to 40 week developmental age and birth.

So called ‘therapeutic cloning’ utilizes in vitro conception and growth of an individual human being, but the new individual will not be allowed to live and grow to the full 40 weeks and be born. Instead, the newly conceived individuals will be killed and their body parts--from cells to organs--will be harvested for use in treating diseases of or injuries to older individual humans (older than embryos). In truth, both ‘types’ of cloning are reproductive, but the end use of the newly conceived individual human determines which name to give the process.

Will individual human life continue to have sanctity or be reduced to mere utility?

Perhaps some believe it isn’t so wrong to conceive embryos and kill them for their body parts, their stem cells, but the processes will not stop there, with that level of cannibalism. There is ongoing effort--well underway--to build an artificial womb, and then conceive and gestate an individual alive human being all the way to the full 40 weeks of development and birth. This marvel will also allow the scientists to stop at any age along the continuum of the lifetime begun at conception and harvest the individual’s body parts … and it will be the owner of the conceived individual and the life supporting machinery that will determine when to kill and harvest, or support for birth!

Why is human cloning bad? … There are many reasons cited by opponents, but it is wrong primarily because the manipulation of individual humans in their earliest age as individual embryonic beings is dehumanizing … dehumanizing for the individuals so conceived for their utility and dehumanizing for the society, which embraces such cannibalism.

The moral ‘line in the sand’ ought to be determined by whether an individual human being is maimed, killed, or discarded in the process of manipulating that individual human lifetime begun at conception. Answer to that question is what our society is not being given in the current debates. And when some portion of the truth regarding these manipulative processes arises, the deeper truth--that even the embryo is an individual human being at its earliest age along its unique continuum of life--is obfuscated, dismissed, ignored, or denied.

Science may one day be able to reproduce a part of the whole organism, as in growing only a kidney that is a perfect tissue match for the individual from whom the genetic nuclear material is taken; that would be an embraceable medical miracle. But as it’s now undertaken, with ‘therapeutic cloning’, an alive individual being very closely matched genetically to the donor of the nuclear material is given life support until the organs of that individual (embryonic stem cells are the organs of the embryo) differentiate sufficiently to be harvested for use with an older individual being treated for a disease or injury. That is, in all truth, cannibalism as surely as if the medical personnel instructed the person being treated to eat the parts taken from the clone in order to treat the disease or injury.

[ To cannibalize, according to NEW WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY, is : to repair (vehicles or aircraft) by using parts from other vehicles, instead of using spare parts.]

Are humans now to be reduced to the utility of aircraft or vehicles, to be cannibalized for their living parts?

"The embryo is genetically human and alive or it's not. "

... and since YOUR definition of alive appears to be that of an egg that now has the potential to divide ( vs. an egg that does not ) your circular logic works well.

Just a thought-

"On the genetic level, although the chimpanzee genome has not yet been decoded, scientists have long known from sampling bits of it that chimp DNA is 98.7 percent identical with human DNA. If just the genes are compared, the similarity increases to 99.2 percent. "

So it's just fine to work on something that is .8% "less human" ?
Wonder what happens if you change a different .8% ?
Maybe the human has different physical characteristics ?
Is it OK to work on that person ?

If/when the 'egg' divides, it is no longer an egg ... but you knew that, you're just trying to obfuscate, trying to create a 'reasonable doubt' that an individual human embryo is in fact an individual human being at that individual's earliest age along the continuum that is its lifetime as it expresses its individuality, its uniqueness. Science tells us that there is no 'reasonable doubt'. The tests devised by scientists, in which they test the amniotic fluids of the individual (not the mother, the individual that built the placenta and filled the sac), those tests work as predicters for the individual because the tests are dealing with an already alive, self-expressing individual human being at the age of embryo, or fetus.

If skin cells really were the same as humans, we'd all have little humans growing off of our bodies.

If embryos were really the same as humans, we'd all have little humans growing out of petri dishes. If an embryo was really a human it would not need a growth incubator. An embryo, sperm, egg, somatic cell will never give rise to a human unless all conditions are met.

Not to scare you or your family but...

A few years back I read an article either online or in a medical magazine, in the article there were some physicians who were looking for people who had growth hormone treatment done in the 70's. The reason being is that there was a possibility that the hormones derived from the cadavers could possibly be carrying the disease that is similar to "Mad Cow" disease for humans called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an invariably fatal brain diseases with unusually long incubation periods measured in years. The article also mentioned that the CJD was discovered in growth hormone treatments with lot #'s that originated in Germany.

http://www.cdc.gov/nip/vacsafe/concerns/bse/cjdqa.htm

An embryo is human and it is alive, but it isn't a human being.

let me ask you this question.
if it was possible, and someone took cells from your liver and they just began differentiating into a new liver, would you call it an organ or potential organ?

I never claimed a somatic cell was a little human. I'm claiming all are not human beings are merely potential human beings. An embryo is further along in that potential, but not much. It is my opinion that both are almost identically morally equivalent. Ahh, so the crib-bound infant is merely a 'potential' for a full human being since that infant must have further conditions to reach puberty, for instance.

...if it was possible, and someone took cells from your liver and they just began differentiating into a new liver ... That's 'magic thinking', very antithetical to science. If someone figures out how to manipulate the liver cells into producing a liver organ, that is science; if the liver cell just starts differentiating, that is magic.

An embryo is further along in that potential, but not much

If you implant an embryo in a womb you get a human.
If you implant a skin cell in a womb you don't get a human.

The difference in outcomes tells us a lot.

Thank you very much for mentioning that. Before my son and his lovely wife got pregnant, they wanted to know the likelihood of their child inheriting CJD, so my son was tested and found to not have CJD lurking. we went through that scare more than six years ago. I have a most beautiful and wonderful granddaughter named Jenny Alexis.

So it's just fine to work on something that is .8% "less human" ?

I think it is morally okay to work (in certain ways) on something that is not human. Do you think it is okay?

Maybe the human has different physical characteristics ? Is it OK to work on that person ?

Have they found any humans who are different enough that they don't have human cells?

Shouldn't a capable scientist, who examines the cells from a human, and compares them to the cells from a chimpanzee, be able to tell the difference? Isn't it true that all humans are more like each other than they are like the chimps?

Of course the scientist could save himself some trouble by just looking at the full scale human and the chimp, because they look different at that level, too.

So we are left with the thought that, to biologists, humans and chimps are different at the submicroscopic level and the full-scale level.

Mother nature even knows the difference. Which is the reason that human-chimp hybrids aren't too common. (Until scientists succeed in creating such hybrids, anyway.)

"If/when the 'egg' divides, it is no longer an egg"

OK.. we have your opinion at least quantified - an egg that has been fertilized, but not yet accomplished it's first division, is to you still an egg.

( which allows the use of the "morning after pill")

... and an egg that has been convinced to divide via chemical means is an example of the creation of life by non-living material.

interesting

Do you really know so little about the subject? Are you really unaware that the first cell divides within hours and the zygote may contain as many as a couple hundred cells by the time it reaches the uterine environ? Didn't you know the 'morning after' pills is actually several, in some cases, and that the action is designed to cause the uterine lining to become 'unsupportive' to the zygote when it arrives, alive, to try and implant itself in the uterine lining? Nice try though ...

So your answer is no ? .. but it would be perfectly fine if it acted before the first split.

Kind of wondering why you use the technical terms instead of simply using "unborn child"
Zogote, embryo, fetus, bioclast and all the rest are kind of de-humanizing since every animal goes through these stages, don't you think ?

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