Human Cloning

FreeRepublic ^ | 4/24/2003 | Marvin Galloway

[MHGinTN]

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.

Is human life a commodity to be experimented with?

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?

[MHGinTN]

The reality of conception is such that the pill(s) might even be taken before conception occurs. Stop trying to bait me with your purposely jouvenile queries. How old are you, anyway?

[RS]

"The reality of conception is such that the pill(s) might even be taken before conception occurs."

Is that an OK or a not OK ?
You really don't like to answer moral questions that you might not have thought out all the ramifications of, don't you ?

... and getting a little personal again are we ?

Much of this conversation could have been avoided if in the beginning you had simply stated that "a fertilized egg is an unborn child and anything that effects negatively on it's development is against your moral convictions".

[MHGinTN]

Much of this conversation could have been avoided if in the beginning you had simply stated that "a fertilized egg is an unborn child ..." Uh, I wrote the essay around which this thread is wrapped. If you read the essay, and your reading comprehension is high school level, you'd realize that is precisely what I've written regarding the conceptus.

[hocndoc]

The article is confusing when it discusses the development of WI-39, but it doesn't actually say that the cell donor was infected. The virus was obtained from an infected child that was aborted, but the cell line donor was not infected.

From that site I refered you to:
http://www.cogforlife.org/fetalvaccines.htm


""Additional Facts - Rubella

The Rubella vaccine, produced by Merck & Company was taken from an aborted baby during the 1964 rubella epidemic when some mothers were advised to have abortions, rather than risk their child being born with Congenital Rubella Syndrome. It was from the 27th baby aborted and immediately dissected that the active rubella virus was finally found. It was commonly referred to as RA27/3, where R=Rubella, A=Abortus, 27=27th fetus, 3=third tissue culture explant. The abortionist collaborated with the Wistar Institute to collect the aborted babies in order to isolate the virus. The vaccine virus was then cultivated in the lung tissue of another aborted female baby, approximately 3 months gestation. (WI-38) (Attenuation of RA27/3 Rubella Virus in WI-38 Human Diploid Cells, Plotkin, Stanley, et. al., American Journal of Disease of Childhood, 118:178-185, 1969.) This abortion was performed because "the parents felt they had too many children." (G. Sven, S. Plotkin and K. McCarthy, Gamma Globulin Prophylaxis; Inactivated Rubella Virus; Production and Biological Control of Live Attenuated Rubella Virus Vaccines, American Journal of Diseases of Children, vol. 118, August 1969).The new vaccine was developed in Philadelphia, Pa. and tested on orphans. (American Journal Diseases of Children, Vol. 110, Oct. 1965) Considering that there was already two licensed rubella vaccines on the market and considering that they could have done exactly what the Japanese did in order to isolate the rubella virus (they swabbed the throat of an infected child), it is obvious this vaccine was created in order to justify fetal tissue research. It is also important to note that Rubella is basically a harmless childhood disease that is only considered to have possible serious effects on the unborn child when a pregnant woman is exposed to the virus during her first trimester. Should this occur, 20-25% of these cases will develop some form of Congenital Rubella Syndrome, which may cause malformations of the heart, eyes or brain, deafness, or liver, spleen and bone marrow problems.

Other Sources: Christina Abel RN.
Merck & Company""

[hocndoc]

The Bioethics Council report covers much of this.
Another guide to decide "when life begins" would be to observe the procedure in the cloning lab or in an in vitro fertilization clinic. The technitions and physicians know which cells are "alive" and which are not.

[hocndoc]

I'll admit to being human-centric to the point of chauvanism. As soon as chimpanzees have conversations like this, I'll recognize their species as human. But, as far as I know, humans are the only species which has members capable of contemplating the ethics of killing and conducting experiments designed to kill "for the common good."

[hocndoc]

Bad logic. Each life form requires the appropriate environment to live. The simple fact that I can put you in a vacuum or under water and you would not be able to survive without support does not make you less human.

There is no potential about embryos. They are human individuals. In the proper environment, a skin cell will be a skin cell. Some of the cells, those in the growth layer, will divide to produce other skin cells. Most simply live as a skin cell, die and are sloughed off. In the proper environment, the embryo will differentiate and grow and become an infant and a toddler and some day, an adult who might be able to have conversations like this.

(read MHG's signature tag line)

[hocndoc]

An embryo is a human being from fertilization to 8 weeks. He or she is.

If the cells were developing into a liver, I'd think they'd be a liver. A vestigial liver, but a liver. (BTW, We are able to transplant individual lobes of the liver from a living donor to the recipient and each liver piece will regenerate into a more complete liver. I'd think the recipient believes he or she has a liver.)

[hocndoc]

The "morning after pill" couldn't work faster than the zygote can divide.
I think the precise point used as a marker for successful fertilization is the expulsion of the polar body and the fusion of the nuclei of the sperm and oocyte. However, the *usual* marker in the real world would be division or replication of the chromosomes.

http://www.l4l.org/library/mythfact.html

""2) Fertilization

Now that we have looked at the formation of the mature haploid sex gametes, the next important process to consider is fertilization. O'Rahilly defines fertilization as:

"... the procession of events that begins when a spermatozoon makes contact with a secondary oocyte or its investments, and ends with the intermingling of maternal and paternal chromosomes at metaphase of the first mitotic division of the zygote. The zygote is characteristic of the last phase of fertilization and is identified by the first cleavage spindle. It is a unicellular embryo."9 (Emphasis added.)

The fusion of the sperm (with 23 chromosomes) and the oocyte (with 23 chromosomes) at fertilization results in a live human being, a single-cell human zygote, with 46 chromosomes — the number of chromosomes characteristic of an individual member of the human species. Quoting Moore:

"Zygote: This cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo). The expression fertilized ovum refers to a secondary oocyte that is impregnated by a sperm; when fertilization is complete, the oocyte becomes a zygote."10 (Emphasis added.)
""

The oocyte is living - it's not an individual organism until it is somehow stimulated to replicate the chromosomes and the nucleus with the proper chromosomes begins mitosis. Then, she's an individual of that species as long as she lives.

[RS]

"the embryo will differentiate and grow"

Interesting points - for one thing, the ovum MUST become something different, in fact many things different before what we know of as a human exists.
In doing so, the ovum does not grow, it simply devides.
It is the completed system of interconnected cells that becomes the entity we call a human.

Can you give me any attribute of "humanness" that we share with the fertilized egg ?

(Obviously DNA, but that would make those liver cells "humans" also )

[RS]

"Zygote: This cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm"

This might have to be re-written since it appears that sperm is no longer necessary.

[RS]

"Much of this conversation could have been avoided if in the beginning you had simply stated that "a fertilized egg is an unborn child ..." Uh, I wrote the essay around which this thread is wrapped. If you read the essay, and your reading comprehension is high school level, you'd realize that is precisely what I've written regarding the conceptus.
"

Was that another little personal dig mixed in there ?...oh I'm so mortified...

I hadn't realized this was a vanity posting...

Conceptus
Why are you still hiding behind the de-humanized words ?
Does it make it seem to your audience that you are really trying to inform them rather then just being another religious advocate ?

[MHGinTN]

Bzzzt, didn't work. Try something else in your gotcha game.

[MHGinTN]

Ping

[hocndoc]

I don't "share" attributes of humanity with a zygote - I was a zygote at one time, just as I was an infant, I will (hopefully) be a geriatric, and I am a middle-aged woman.

How many attributes must someone share with you to be human enough for you to recongnize him or her as having the right not to be killed?

[hocndoc]

Again, covered in the Bioethics report:

http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/cloningreport/terminology.html

""In other words, in terms of its future prospects, it is a "zygote-like entity" or a (cloned) "zygote equivalent." viii ""

"" In other words, the product of SCNT is an organism in its germinal stage, and its activities are those of an integrated and self-developing whole.ix ""

"" We do not start in a terminological vacuum or with an empty dictionary. We observe that even people who prefer not to call the one-celled product of SCNT a zygote or embryo use terms like "blastocyst" and "embryo" to name the product a few cell divisions later.xi We think that using or coining other words will be more confusing to members of the public as they try to follow and contribute to the ethical discussion. And we clearly assume, as already stated, that the product of human SCNT could someday be shown to be capable of developing into a later-stage embryo, fetus, or live human being, even though such capacity has yet to be documented. ""



This document is incredible. If you only read "Chapter Three:On Terminology",
http://www.bioethics.gov/reports/cloningreport/terminology.html
many of your questions will be answered, even concerning parthenogenesis.

[RS]

"I don't "share" attributes of humanity with a zygote - I was a zygote at one time, just as I was an infant, I will (hopefully) be a geriatric, and I am a middle-aged woman."

Infants, geriatrics and middle aged women share many attributes of "humanness", but I can't come up with any that they share with a single cell fertilized ovum.

"How many attributes must someone share with you to be human enough for you to recongnize him or her as having the right not to be killed?"

Just give me a few for a start -

My guess is that if you wanted to you would be able to come up with many attributes that zygotes of many different species share.

[MHGinTN]

The predictive tests done on embryos and fetuses (and in amniocentesis, for instance) assume the organism being tested is the same organism that will evidence months later ... the original human being at embryo age will be the same individual human being at later ages along its continuum of life, that's the reason the tests are reliable predictors. What do you suppose is common to the embryo age of an indivudal and the toddler age of that same individual, for instance?

[hocndoc]

Now we are defining "human." I use the species definition, and in light of the possibility of hybrids and chimeras, I'll use the definition of human being of human parentage.

How many attributes do you require?

[MHGinTN]

What do all the ages of the individual lifetime continuum share?... The very proteins that organ transplanting tries to deal with and leads some scientists to want a blanket approval for therapeutic cloning. But I suspect you knew that.