Posted on 04/24/2003 3:40:42 PM PDT by 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?
Viewing the piece, if one had little or no abckground information to call upon as filter for the assertions made, one would be convinced that embryos are nothing more than potential human beings, to be exploited for miraculous cures of diseases and injuries. The researcher, Dr. Kessler, presented in the segment is doing the science of Embryology. He has chosen to abandon the truth of the founding axiom in Embryology, in favor of continuing his research and to now address his daughter's tragic physical condition due to a skiing accident. Though I have deep sympathy for Dr. Kessler and his daughter, I also must oppose his mischaracterizations and dissembling regarding embryonic individual life.
What Dr. Kessler is doing and advocates that our society should wholeheartedly embrace is, in reality, cannibalism. Why?... Because the very science he calls upon to underhird his methodology holds axiomatic that individual life begins at conception, that, in effect, every lifetime begins at conception and continues along an unbroken path (if that individual life remains alive) known as the continuum of that individual's life. Is Dr. Kessler evil, does he have evil intentions with his dissembling? I don't think so, and I certainly wouldn't characterize his deep love for his daughter as anything evil. But he is purposely ignoring the basic truths of his own chosen science in order to give his work greater utility, and that utility is very dehumanizing because it strips individual embryonic individuals of their right to life already begun, in order to cannibalize those embryos for older-than-embryonic individuals.
RJ, I know you're right, these techniques will be done on humans somewhere in the world. I just don't want my nation embracing cannibalism simply because someone like the French will gladly resort to cannibalism.
No, I'm trying to establish what the difference is. Suppose we can take a cell from XBob and grow a whole new XBob - don't XBob's cells then have exactly the same embryonic potential as parthenotes or fertilized eggs or whatever?
Oh, well, you ought to be okay with parthenogenesis then - no conception required.
Yes, I know - that's not quite what you had in mind ;)
For me, for the moment, I would put something like parthenogenesis on approximately the same level as culturing any other cell in the laboratory. Is it immoral to take a sample of my tissue and promote its replication in the lab? Surely not - there's no long-term viability for those cells, no way for them to do anything on their own once we stop artificially keeping them alive, not even potentially.
I don't see anything so far to cause me to think that promoting replication in an unfertilized egg - or sperm, since you can do it that way, too - is of some other moral plane than causing any other cell to replicate. Things change when the egg is fertilized - conception. I just don't see what pushing the definition of life beyond that point gets us, other than drawing an artificial line simply because we can - we've gone from life beginning at quickening, to life beginning at implantation, to life beginning at conception, and now we're going to push the start of life back so far that essentially we're saying that life is created the minute an unfertilized egg comes into existence, but I don't for the life of me see any moral or rational justification for such a definition. Call that what you will, but I'll require a bit more persuading on that point - and I hardly think I'm alone on this.
Yes, but....people have an amazing ability to spin some bad act into being done for some greater good. "It's wrong of me to destroy this report that Bob's been working on, but I really need that promotion, and Bob doesn't - I've got three kids to feed, and Bob's not even married" and so forth and so on. Never underestimate the ability of people to rationalize getting the things they want by any means necessary ;)
Some people have an ability to delude themselves into thinking that the wrong they are doing is not wrong.
Very true, but that only reinforces my original point, that people do bad things because they think some good is served thereby. Setting aside the truly mentally ill and deranged for a moment, ordinary average people are wonderfully adept at finding good reasons to do bad things. Doctor Mengele surely thought to himself that what he was doing was for the greater good of the German people. It's all a part of the human condition, I suspect - the seeds of evil lie buried within us all...
The seeds of evil may be in us, but, if there is such a thing as free will, we needn't choose to act out every immoral idea that crosses our minds. And the bigger immoral patterns of behavior usually take time to develop, like any habits take time to develop.
Mankind can opt out of doing evil, and I think proof of that can be seen in the biographies of those who have reformed their lives. The former abortion providers, who now realize abortion is wrong, are a good example of that. They had thought some "good" came out of abortions, but then they began to understand that the "good" consequences of abortion were not "good" enough to outweigh the bad consequences.
Unless we deliberately close our eyes and ears, the everyday world around us presents us with countless examples of human behaviors and their consequences. The lessons about behavior may take some time to sink in, but they are harder to avoid than any lessons learned in school.
Let me reiterate, to be perfectly clear. The sex cells are most unusual in the human body because they are potentially capable of mitosis, differentiating toward tissues and organs that are much more than their appearance as a sperm or ovum. To purposely assert that a typical somatic cell from an organ is 'just the same as' a reproductive cell is dissembling (at least), especially if the poster knows enough to discuss parthenogenesis. To purposely mislead readers into believing a cell from a kidney or liver (other than a stem cell) could be stimulated into repoducing a replication of the whole organism rather than 'perhaps' a whole organ, is dishonest as well. Cloning extracts the DNA from a somatic cell, then inserts that nuclear material into an enucleated ovum, to achieve conception. The reason for that enucleation is directly related to the sex cell being vastly more capable of supporting and directing differentiation, as opposed to the cell of any other organ in the body which is already differentiated way down the line from organism, to specialized organ.
The following is purposeful dissembling of the truth, twisting the truth to support an agenda designed to persuade us to embrace cannibalism:
For me, for the moment, I would put something like parthenogenesis on approximately the same level as culturing any other cell in the laboratory. Is it immoral to take a sample of my tissue and promote its replication in the lab? This poster knows full well that the somatic cell, when stimulated to divide or replicate, can only replicate itself, not an entire organism, simply because the coding for an entire organism has been lost as the organism differentiated its very specialized organs and tissues. I think this poster doesn't deserve further courtesy since the agenda of the poster includes purposeful dishonesty. Surely not - there's no long-term viability for those cells, no way for them to do anything on their own once we stop artificially keeping them alive, not even potentially. That comment is correct, mainly because the typical somatic cell has no ability to differentiate anything but the self or the organ tissue where it arises. But you have tried to obfuscate that truth from the readers.
I don't see anything so far to cause me to think that promoting replication in an unfertilized egg - or sperm, since you can do it that way, too - is of some other moral plane than causing any other cell to replicate. You know the difference in the two classes of cells, based on their differentiation ability, yet you choose to characterize them as the same. That's too dishonest for my taste. I shall not entertain your dissembling further.
Doctor Mengele surely thought to himself that what he was doing was for the greater good of the German people.
Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity
Historian Robert Proctor has argued persuasively that the Nazi experiment was rooted in pre-1933 thinking about the essence of personhood, racial hygienics and survival economics and that physicians were instrumental both in pioneering research and in carrying out this program. In fact, Proctor is adamant that scientists and physicians were pioneers and not pawns in this process. By 1933, however, when political power was consolidated by National Socialists, resistance within the medical community was too late. Proctor notes, for example, that most of the fifteen-odd journals devoted to racial hygienics were established long before the rise of National Socialism.
Abiding Truth Ministries - Helping families protect themselves ... …While the neo-pagans were busy attacking from without, liberal theologians undermined Biblical authority from within the Christian church. The school of so-called "higher criticism," which began in Germany in the late 1800s, portrayed the miracles of God as myths; by implication making true believers (Jew and Christian alike) into fools. And since the Bible was no longer accepted as God's divine and inerrant guide, it could be ignored or reinterpreted. By the time the Nazis came to power, "Bible-believing" Christians, (the Confessing Church) were a small minority. As Grunberger asserts, Nazism itself was a "pseudo-religion" (ibid.:79) that competed, in a sense, with Christianity and Judaism.
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