Legal and Moral Implications of Cloning
At first it was just plain surprising. Word last week that a scientist named Ian Wilmut had
succeededin cloning an adult mammal - an achievement long thought impossible - caught the
imagination ofeveryone. The laboratory process that produced Dolly, an unremarkable-looking
sheep, theoreticallywould work for humans as well. A world with human clones was suddenly
within reach. It was sciencefiction coming to life.
In the wake of Wilmut's announcement, governments hurried to draft guidelines for the unknown,
afuture filled with incredible possibilities. President Clinton ordered a national commission
to study thelegal and moral implications of cloning. Leaders in Europe, where most nations already
prohibit humancloning, began examining the moral implications of cloning other species.
Like the Theory of Relativity, the splitting of the atom, and the first space flight,
Dolly's appearancehas generated a long list of difficult puzzles for scientists, politicians,
and philosophers. And wildquestions on the topic of cloning continue to mount.
Why would anyone want to clone a human being in the first place?
The human cloning situations that experts consider most frequently fall into two broad categories:
1)parents who want to clone a child, either to provide transplants for a dying child or to replace
that child,and 2) adults who for a variety of reasons might want to clone themselves.
Will it be possible to clone the dead?
Perhaps, if the body is fresh, says one expert. The cloning method used by Wilmut's lab
requirescombining an egg cell with the nucleus of a cell containing the DNA of the person to be
cloned. (DNA is avery long, ribbon -like molecule that contains our genetic information.) And that
means that thenucleus must be intact. Cells die and the cell nucleus begins to break apart after
death. But, yes, intheory at least it might be possible.
Would a cloned human be identical to the original?
Identical genes don't produce identical people, as anyone who knows a set of identical twins can
tell you. In fact, twins are more alike than clones would be, since they have at least shared the
same environment within the mother, are usually raised in the same family, and so forth.
Parents could clonea second child who resembled their first in appearance, but all the evidence
suggests the two wouldhave very different personalities. Twins separated at birth do sometimes
share personalitycharacteristics, but such characteristics in a cloned son or daughter would only
be reminders of thechild who was lost.
Even in terms of biology, a clone would not be identical to the "master copy".
The clone's cells, forexample, would have energy-processing machinery that came from the egg,
not from the person whowas cloned. But most of the physical differences between originals and
copies are so minor thatdetection of them would require a sophisticated laboratory.
The one possible exception is bearingchildren. Wilmut and his coworkers are not sure that Dolly
will be able to have lambs. They will try tofind out once she's old enough to breed.
What if parents decided to clone a child in order to harvest organs?
Most experts agree that it would be psychologically harmful if a child sensed he had been
broughtinto the world simply as an organ donor. But some parents already produce second
children withnonfatal transplants in mind, and many experts do not oppose this.
Cloning would increase the chancesfor a tissue match from 25 percent to nearly 100 percent.
If cloned animals could be used as organ donors, we wouldn't have to worry about cloning twins
for transplants. Pigs, for example, have organs similar in size to humans'. But the human body
attacks and destroys tissue from other species. To get around that, one company is trying to
alter the pig's geneticcode to prevent pig organs from being attacked.
If the company's technicians succeed, it may be moreefficient to produce such pigs by cloning
than by current methods.
How would a human clone refer to the donor of its DNA?
"Mom" is not right, because the woman or women who supplied the egg and gave birth to the
infantwould more appropriately be called Mother. "Dad" isn't right, either. A traditional
father supplies onlyhalf the DNA in a child. Judith Martin, in her writings under the name
of "Miss Manners";, suggests thephrase, "Most honored sir or madam". Why? "One should always
respect one's ancestors," she says,"regardless of what they did to bring one into the world.
"That still leaves some confusion over vocabulary. The editorial director of one dictionary
says thatthe noun "clonee" may sound like a good term, but it's not clear enough. Instead,
he prefers "original"and "copy".
What are the other implications of cloning for society?
The gravest concern isn't really cloning itself, but genetic engineering - the deliberate
altering ofgenes to create human beings according to certain requirements. Specifically,
some experts areconcerned about the creation of a new (and disrespected) social class:
"the clones". One expert believesthe situation could be comparable to what occurred in
the 16th century, when Europeans puzzled overhow to classify the unfamiliar inhabitants
of the Americas, and endlessly debated whether or not theywere humans.
The list of questions could go on; people are just beginning to wonder about the future
of the worldafter cloning.