The latest flurry of stories has nothing to do with last year’s sensational claims by the Raelians, the Quebec-based cult, that they had successfully produced a cloned baby. Most of the scientific community snubbed the group and its claims as little more than deceptive self-promotion. “Serious” scientists would not make such dishonest claims. No, this month’s flurry of stories and columns began with the announcement that the British Parliament approved therapeutic human cloning and the country’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority granted its first licence for such research last week. This time, though, the “serious” scientists are, for the most part, cheering. “Serious” Canadian scientists are soooo jealous that their British counterparts can start experimenting. That means “serious” Brit scientists can play around with eggs and nuclei and embryos and clones—creating and killing as they wish. Not just that, they’ll get paid to do it. That’s part of what makes them “serious.” Otherwise they’d be like kids with chemistry sets, blowing up stuff in the back shed. Or better yet, like Raelians in their weird get-ups and even weirder sexual practices. But I digress. The reason Canadian researchers are jealous is that under the Assisted Human Reproduction Act passed last winter, cloning was outlawed in Canada. There is some debate about whether the definition of cloning in the law will actually ban the practice, but in theory, Parliament shut down that avenue of research. The scientists have not given up hope, however. The public relations campaign and the word games are well underway to convince Canadians, and more specifically, the government, that this avenue of research is beneficial and essential to the welfare of mankind. It’s cures, not cash, that they seek. Mind you, the cures they promise are entirely theoretical. Embryonic stem cell research has produced no cures in humans, unlike its ethical counterpart using adult stem cells. In fact, the research community is increasingly looking to governments to fund embryonic stem cell research because the private investment community is not so enthusiastic about unproven technology. Bioethicists, have of course, been front and centre in the discussions. Canada’s Peter Singer (not a clone of Princeton’s Peter Singer) is a bioethicist at University of Toronto. I mentioned him in last week’s column for his plea for a new “compassionate homicide” charge to accommodate those who kill the ones they love. He and his colleague, Abdallah Daar, both at the Joint Centre for Bioethics at University of Toronto, penned a column for the Globe and Mail last week cleverly titled, “We should clone this U.K. policy.” They argue that therapeutic cloning is different from reproductive cloning because the former does not involve implanting the created embryo into a woman’s womb nor does it allow the embryo to develop past 14 days. The created embryo is used for research, its stem cells are extracted and the embryo dies. That is ethical. By contrast, in reproductive cloning, the embryo is implanted in a uterus and allowed to develop and be born. That, say the bioethicists, is unethical. Just to be clear, if you clone an embryo for research and kill it after two weeks, that is ethical. If you use cloning to create an embryo that will be implanted and eventually born, that’s wrong. In a National Post article on the U.K. cloning, Dr. Singer pointed out that critics of the plan had the wrong idea. “It’s not even a matter of whether life begins at conception. This is a clump of cells. And we live in a country where abortion is legal.” If it’s not a matter of conception and just a “clump of cells”, why did he bring up the subject of abortion? Perhaps it’s because for years, abortion advocates used the “clump of cells” line to dismiss the qualms of conscience women had about abortion. With the advent of ultrasound, that little lie is getting more difficult to maintain. Dr. Singer raises the issue of conception because of one technology used for cloning—somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). In this process, the nucleus of a cell taken from the donor is implanted in a female ovum and stimulated to create an embryo. The embryo is allowed to grow for up to two weeks and the stem cells are extracted, killing the embryo. Dr. Singer says, “People confuse therapeutic cloning with carbon copy, Boys from Brazil, Raelian-style reproductive cloning. This is nothing like that.” No this is like “serious” scientist, Dolly the sheep-style, reproductive cloning. As Montreal bioethicist Margaret Somerville points out, it is the same technology. The only difference is the intent; therapeutic is for research and reproductive is for children. For Dr. Somerville, unlike Dr. Singer, the question is whether embryonic stem cell research is inherently wrong in that it kills the human embryo. The answer is, of course it’s wrong. It’s easy to get bogged down in the science and to decide this subject is too complex for ordinary people to understand. In fact, the issue is pretty clear and boils down to an old, and some would say, cliched maxim: the end doesn’t justify the means. You cannot kill another human being because something good might result. Somehow the Raelians and their outlandish claims seem less threatening than the “serious” scientists and their killing technologies.
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