Cloning

"The notion that cloning poses “no unique risks” compared with other artificial reproductive technologies is highly misleading. First, by focusing only on whether or not “unique risks” occur with cloning ignores the importance of quantitative differences in risks between cloning and other reproductive techniques. Over 90% of cloning attempts end in dead animals."

"A number of researchers have noticed similarities between some of the mitochondrial depletion diseases in humans and some of the abnormalities seen in SCNT and hypothesize that aberrant nuclear-mitochondrial interactions in SCNTs could be responsible for some of these abnormalities. A research team in Germany found that “A survey of perinatal clinical data from human subjects with deficient mitochondrial respiratory chain activity has revealed a plethora of phenotypes that have striking similarities with abnormalities commonly encountered in SCNT fetuses and offspring. We discuss the limited experimental data on nuclear-mitochondrial interaction effects in SCNT and explore the potential effects in the context of new findings about the biology of mitochondria” (Hiendleder et al. 2005: 69). Researchers in the United Kingdom have suggested that potential overpopulation of mitochondria could lead to the large offspring syndrome often seen in SCNT cow clones and call for more work in this area: “a cytoplasm over-populated with mitochondria would lead to cellular expansion that might be indicative of the reported large-offspring syndromes. This under-researched area of investigation could provide clear answers to some of the developmental abnormalities witnessed in NT offspring and aborted feotuses, whether mediated through failure of somatic cell reprogramming or independently” (St John et al. 2004: 638-639)."

"In sum, there is a unique risk posed by SCNT clones that is not posed by other ARTs (artificial reproductive technologies): the potential for aberrant nuclearmitochondrial interactions. Embryos created via SCNT embryos differ from those created by other ARTs in two ways: they may be heteroplasmic (e.g. contain mtDNA from two sources) and nuclear-encoded mitochondrial DNA transcription and translation factors persist in SCNT, but not IVF, embryos."

"Why do we need therapeutic cloning? As a layman, several important reasons come to mind. One, implantation of human embryonic stem cells is not safe unless they contain the patient's own DNA. Two, efforts, to repair central nervous system disorders may need to recapitulate the process of fetal development, and that could only be accomplished by human embryonic stem cells. Three, therapeutic cloning is done without fertilizing an egg. It can be strictly regulated. If we also enforce an absolute ban on reproductive cloning, we will not slide down the dreaded slippery slope into moral and ethical chaos. Any powerful new technology comes with the possibility for abuse. But when we decide that the benefit to society is worth the risk, we take every possible precaution and go forward. The unfertilized eggs that will be used for nucleus transplantation will never leave the laboratory and will never be implanted in a womb. But if we do not make this research legal, if we do not use Government funding and oversight, it will happen privately, dangerous unregulated and uncontrolled."

"In response to something that Dr. Frist said, I need to object, and that is that, Senator, you insist on separating therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem cells. However, in my own case, I require re-myelination of nerves. That means replacing the conductive coat of fat, myelin, that allows electricity to come down, currents from the brain to the central nervous system for function. At the moment, only embryonic stem cells have the potential to do that, and experiments are being done now in larger animals demonstrating that. In fact, a scientist at Washington University, Dr. John McDonald, whom I have been working with says that there is no way he would inject stem cells without being able to use my own DNA for safety reasons. So without the ability to use my own DNA, without that somatic cell transfer, I am out of luck. The other thing is to please remember that therapeutic cloning, nucleus transplantation, is done with unfertilized eggs. You keep referring to destroying an embryo. I think that destroying an embryo is what happens when the leftovers from fertility clinics are thrown out. We can agree that they go to the garbage routinely. But to say that an unfertilized egg has the same status, I believe is incorrect, and I think that this is the line of research that holds so much promise and can also get us around the ethical quandary that we keep putting ourselves in. We are talking about an unfertilized egg that will never leave the lab, that will never be implanted in a womb, and that can be regulated. And it is crucial for research."

"Drucker: You know, we shouldn't forget that not long ago, there were almost no more fish left in the ocean and half the world's population faced the threat of hunger. Cloning technology turned that around. Extremists won't admit they'd rather people went hungry than eat cloned fish, so they yell about human cloning."

"Stewart Newman: If embryo cloning is permitted, within a few years frustration over lack of progress in producing safe and effective therapeutics from (?) embryo stem cells will lead to calls to permit harvesting of embryo germ cells from two to three month clonal embryos, and we may find ourselves here again."

"Christopher Reeve: If nucleus transplantation, aka therapeutic cloning, is banned, it will be a tremendous setback for science, and it will be indefinitely ... it will indefinitely prolong the suffering of hundreds of millions around the world, who are afflicted with wide variety of diseases and disabilities."

"Rudolf Jaenisch: The technique of therapeutic cloning combines nuclear cloning and embryonic stem cell research with the goal of creating a customized stem cell line for a needy patient. For instance, if anyone of you is severely diabetic, one would take, for example, a skin cell, remove its nucleus and transfer the nucleus into a human egg from which its own nucleus has been removed. The nucleus would be injected then ... would be ... and then the nucleus of this cell is exposed to signals of the egg, it reverts to its embryonic state, and your skin cell begins to re-express those things that it expressed when it was an embryo. Whether the cell that results from this is a new embryo or a skin cell rejuvenated is as much a question of philosophy as of science. The cloned cells can be grown in the petri dish and can be induced to differentiate to insulin producing cells and implanted into you back. They will not be rejected because they are from your own body. So this is one possible scenario, medical scenario, there are many others, including treatment for Parkinson, blood diseases, liver diseases and so on."

"Rudolf Jaenisch: In vitro fertilization, the embryos has a unique combination of genes that has not existed before, and it has a high potential to develop into a normal baby, healthy baby when implanted. In therapeutic cloning, the embryo has identical combination of genes as a donor, has no conception. Therefore the cloned embryo does not represent the creation of new life, but rather reprogramming and rejuvenation of an existing cell from your body. One could argue it's a special form of transplantation. The cloned embryo has a very low, exceedingly low potential to ever develop into a normal baby, because of the overwhelming problems which is associated with reproductive cloning. So the generation of embryonic stem cells from cloned (Inaudible) for the purpose of therapeutic cloning would appear to pose fewer ethical problems than the generation of embryonic stem cells from in vitro fertilized embryos, and the majority in this country certainly supports that."

"James Kelly: Complex technical obstacles stand in the way of human cloning through somatic nuclear transfer ever being medically used in humans. These obstacles include short and long term genetic mutations, tumor formation and unexpectedly tissue rejection. In addition, the cloning process is very inefficient in itself, often requiring a hundred women’s eggs to create an embryo able to yield stem cells. Because of these roadblocks, scientists expect it will take decades before cloning will have clinical uses, if ever, regardless of whether stem cells from cloning ... cloned embryos can show results in the lab. And leading scientists in the embryonic stem cell field, including James Thompson, have admitted that the cost of cloning based therapy would be astronomical. Others have simply said that no one can afford it. If human cloning research is allowed to move forward, these obstacles will need to be overcome for each of cloning's potential medical uses. This will unavoidably necessitate diverting crucial resources from other avenues that have already proven their ability to safely address the conditions that cloning has only hoped to address in the distant future. In humans, adult stem cells have successfully been used to treat multiple sclerosis, diabetes, certain forms of cancer, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and immune deficiency syndrome. They're in clinical trial for spinal cord injury, heart disease, and ALS. More work certainly needs to be done to refine and expand their uses and to improve their performance, but refining, expanding and improving are far cries from embarking on a new, highly problematic research, with little hope of leading to medically available treatments. In fact, such a trade off would be madness. Yet we're being told that cloning is our brightest hope to cure disability and disease. Many sick, disabled and dying people have embraced this message in the name of desperation and trusting hope."

"Stuart Newman: I'm here to argue that not only is full term cloning a bad idea, as Dr.Jaenisch forcefully pointed out, but that so-called therapeutic cloning, that is, nuclear transfer to make stem cells, is also in the long run going to be a bad idea. And I want to emphasize that my views on this don't arise from any notion of the sanctity of the embryo or any religious ideas or anything like that. But I do feel that there's probably nobody in this room that won't have some point in which they say, this is unacceptable. So for example, if a clonal fetus is allowed to develop to seven months, in order to harvest cells, this might be unacceptable to more people than growing clonal embryos for only seven days or 14 days. Probably everybody in this room would say, we certainly don't want to make full term babies for the purpose of transplanting tissue. Probably everybody would object to that. What I would like to convey to you is that the logic of the science and medicine is leading us in that direction. Not because anybody is motivated to do that per se; specifically, I don't think any of the scientists involved are motivated to do that, but there are all sorts of pressures, patient pressures, commercial pressures--and the patient pressures I believe are very genuine, authentic and must be satisfied in some way, so I'm not arguing that there shouldn't be patient pressures--but there will be pressures to bring us to the point. As was quoted from my Senate testimony, there are, in fact, stem cells that can be harvested from two month old embryos. These are called “embryo germ cells.” So if clonal embryos were produced, and it became possible, as some scientists are attempting, to grow the embryo for two months rather than just for seven days or 14 days, it would be possible to harvest these embryo germ cells. Now, why would you want to do that? John Gearhart at Johns Hopkins has worked on those cells, and has shown that they are apparently as versatile as embryo stem cells from the early petri dish cultures, but they don't have the same propensity to cause cancer when transplanted into adult animals. Now that's a very important motivation for harvesting these later stem cells."

"Stuart Newman: Dr. Jaenisch mentioned the scenario of treating diabetics with embryo stem cells. But one of the problems in Type 1 diabetics is that they reject their own insulin producing cells. So even if you could clone that person into a clonal embryo, grow up islet cells and transplant them back into the diabetic, the person's immune system would still reject those cells. So you would have to find some way to immune-suppress the diabetic patients anyway, so as to treat them with embryo stem cells. I think that the American people are very optimistic and only want to hear about the promises, and don't want to hear about the downside. I just point out that in a very recent paper of Dr. Jaenisch 's that he spoke about, where he showed the proof of principle of using stem cells and transplanting differentiated bone marrow cells back into the mouse with the immune deficiency, there was another experiment as well where they corrected the genetic defect in the embryo stem cells. The embryo stem cells were used to produce a full term clone of the original genetically defective mouse, but with the genetic condition corrected. They now had a genetic twin of the original mouse with the corrected gene, and were then able to use bone marrow from that corrected mouse to treat the original mice. Now here's a scenario for which many people would say, “great!” People are already having new children to provide bone marrow for children with genetic conditions. If the public was aware that now you could clone your sick child and use the bone marrow from the new child--whom you'll love like your old child, of course--and transfer that bone marrow back into your sick child, huge sectors of the public would find that acceptable. And this is what I mean when I say that we're on a track where we're coming closer and closer to full term cloning, by way of all sorts of intermediate stages. And it's not that there aren't people already advocating this."

"Stuart Newman: Dr. Jaenisch has argued very strongly against full term cloning, and as developmental biologists he and I know the reasons that this should never be attempted. But there are many people out there, bioethicists who are saying, well, we take risks every day in our lives. If it's risky to have a cloned child, well, so be it. We go out and drive our cars, right? We breathe the air. So let's take these risks. And this is crazy. But apparently otherwise responsible bioethicists are advocating this. And to my mind, this is going to happen; it's virtually inevitable unless legal restrictions are put in place. I disagree with some of the very punitive criminalization of scientific activities and therapies from abroad in the proposed Brownback legislation. I think something has to be done about that. But on the point of prohibiting embryo cloning, I think that it must be done, or we'll all wind up in a place where we don't want to be."

"Christopher Reeve: I work with Dr. John McDonald at Washington University in St. Louis, and he is a very knowledgeable researcher on (Inaudible) stem cells, and a few years ago he said to me that in order to cure my particular condition, which is demyelination of nerves in a very small area of the spinal cord, right at the second cervical vertebrae, that if you imagine the rubber coating around a wire that allows conductivity of electricity, the same thing as with nerves, myelin is like that rubber coating. It's a fatty substance that if it comes off of the nerves, then signals do not go from the brain down to the spinal cord as required. However, it is possible, and he's demonstrated this as graphic(?) as possible, to re-myelinate. Now, a few years ago, he said, we would be willing to inject human embryonic stem cells into you and hope for the best. But hoping for the best is a very dangerous proposition for people with spinal cord injuries because our spinal cord injury affects every organ in the body, and the most serious side effect is that it severely compromises the immune system, so spinal cords patients, particularly with high level injuries like mine, are prone first to pneumonia, which I've had at least five times since my injury, many patients often die from that. Also, it compromises the cardiovascular system, compromises the digestive tract, the ... your whole bowel-bladder-sexual function, skin integrity and also bone density, so that osteoporosis becomes a very ... a very critical factor. So literally he said to me that the immunosuppression that would be required just to inject 30million human embryonic stem cells from an anonymous donor might kill me. And now, he would be unwilling as a doctor, because of the ethics involved that a doctor is ethically bound to give his patients the best possible treatment, he would not inject me with embryonic stemcells unless we go the other route, which is therapeutic cloning- taking an egg, removing the nucleus, taking DNA from my skin and deriving stem cells from that, which would be injected in a manner that would probably not be rejected by my immune system. So my future, and others would agree, many scientists would agree, my future, in terms of being able to recover will depend on some way of delivering stem cells without compromising my immune system and therapeutic cloning, which would use my DNA is the best hope."

"Antonio Regalado: I'm Antonio Regalado, from the Wall Street Journal, I just had an informational question for Mr.Reeve. You said that your doctor, Dr. McDonald, would not implant embryonic ... human embryonic stem cells into you unless that you went through the therapeutic cloning ... that that was your best chance of being able to recover potentially. Have you actually pursued that line of research directly with your own cells? Any attempts to transform them?"

"Christopher Reeve: No, you have to understand that therapeutic cloning is a very nascent technology that's not ready for use in humans. But knowing that it will not . . . provided our scientists are allowed to go ahead with the research, it really shouldn't take that long before they're ready for humans. However, knowing that there is a better technology out there than just using embryonic stemcells, he as a doctor feels, given the immune rejection problem for people with spinal cord injuries, he's not going to go ahead, as he had planned to. There was a plan to actually use embryonic stem cells as soon as it would be allowed by the FDA. He is not going to do that until therapeutic cloning gets to the point where it could be applied to humans. And I just want to make one other very quick comment and that is in England, just a month ago, Dr. Ann Bishop, who works with the tissue engineering corporation over there, was able to take mouse embryonic stem cells that derived . . . had been made obviously therapeutic cloning, and they turned those cells into tissue that is applied to the lungs, to deficient cell types or cell tissues in the lungs, and said, have already reported, I guess it's public knowledge, that they feel they are now ready to do it in humans, so the idea that it would be decades before you could get to human application, I think that is one example I'm giving you right now of the fact that that's not true. I can give you another example. Doctor Oswald Stewart, of the Reeve Research Center, UC Irvine has said that you could probably get to the use of therapeutic cloning in humans within about three to five years. So I absolutely dispute the time line that's been put up before."

"Apporva Mandavilli: I'm Apporva Mandavilli, from Biomednet news. There is this difference between the U.S. and U.K. as far as regulation, so what's to stop the average patient from just getting on a plane and going to the U.K. and getting the treatment they need? And is there a concern among the scientific community that this is going to set U.S. research back?"

"James Kelly: This is a topic that I discussed with Dr. Young of Rutgers. Dr. Young is in favor of therapeutic cloning, and he pointed out to me on the Internet, his Internet forum, speaking on the moral issues, he said that why ban cloning in the United States when somebody might be able to get on a plane, fly to England, whatever, if it was available, if it was a treatment, and be cloned? The only way we could find out whether or not they actually had such a therapy upon their return would be to do a DNA check of all returning people to the United States, which is ... of course is not going to happen. My response to Dr. Young and here again, my reasons for even looking into this in the first place and for opposing cloning on the scientific reasons I've mentioned in my opening five minutes, my response to Dr. Young is, people can get on a plane, and they can fly to other countries. NBC mentioned the Eastern European countries as one where they might be able to engage in child prostitution. Does that mean that we should make child prostitution legal in the United States? Because if cloning is going to be banned, it's going to be banned because of these scientific reasons. It's going to be banned for moral reasons. That's why the ... that's why Senator Brownback proposed the legislation. And if it's banned for moral reasons, we shouldn't change our moral perspective in the United States simply because somebody else somewhere else in the world says something is moral that we in the United States have decided is immoral."

"Christopher Reeve: On the other hand, you have to understand that our allies are not rogue nations. The U.K., Australia, Canada, Singapore, Israel, India, these are just some of the countries that have already passed therapeutic cloning. In fact, England passed it twice. The House of Lords considered it, passed it, the pro-life groups objected to it, they took time to listen to those groups and then they passed it a second time. And therapeutic cloning is allowed with strict government oversight. And to say that those countries are less moral than we are, I think is hubris on our part that's out of control."

"Stuart Newman: It's kind of interesting how the ways of thinking about this evolves. I agree that these cloned animals are not normal. Dr. Jaenisch 's work has given ample proof of this. Moreover, the tetraploid embryos are also abnormal, and Dr. Jaenisch said before that in making clonal embryos to generate these stem cells you don't make a new individual, because it's an individual that is genetically precedented, that is, it's genetically derived from a prototype. But back in 1997, when Dolly was first cloned, although there were people that said we should clone humans and people that said we shouldn't clone humans, it seemed like everybody agreed that if you do clone a human, it'll be a human. But now, people are saying, bioethicists, and I just heard Dr. Jaenisch say it, that when you make these clones by nuclear transfer, you're making something that's like ... more like a manufactured item. It's not really anew individual. Therefore, you could potentially do anything you want with it. If you wanted to grow it up to an abnormal full term whatever, it wouldn't be a person. As Dr. Jaenisch said, you're not creating a new individual by doing this, so you have something that you are now at liberty to do whatever you want with..."

"James Kelly: The Justice Department just testified to the House, and in their testimony, they specifically said that they can't tell the difference from the cloning process and the reproductive process as far as the embryos being implanted. And they specifically said that they would not be able to regulate reproductive cloning. Separate from therapeutic cloning."

"Craig Venter:... the ultimate end of the slippery slope argument gets back to reproductive cloning instead of therapeutic cloning, right? That's the slippery slope that's held in front of all of us as the big evil."

"Christopher Reeve: I believe, throughout history, there has been common agreement in societies around the world that the life results because of the union of male and female. Whether it's done in a test tube, or whether it's done through intercourse. And fertilized embryos in clinics are still the union, result of the union of male and female. Therapeutic cloning takes an egg that is not fertilized, and is left in the cellular stage, in the very early stages, about three to five, seven days, then the nucleus is removed and the DNA from a patient. Either male or female can be put into it. Now, that is an aberrant life form. If you were to take it further and implant it, then only insane people would want to do that, in my opinion. But considering the fact that they're talking ... you're talking about the difference of life as we've understood it for hundreds of thousands of years, versus a collection of cells that will never become a human being, and I don't even believe deserves a status of the word embryo. It could be called a pseudo-embryo, it could be called, you know, some other name should come up from it, because just like test tube babies scared people before, the buzzword embryo scares people today. Cloning scares people today, but this is simply a manipulation of cells that are not equivalent to life as we've always known it."