Human Cloning

The scientific community was taken almost totally by surprise. Somatic cell nuclear transfer – the technology used to clone Dolly – seemed to be too simple. Experts expected cloning to be possible one day, but not soon and not through this method.

When the cloning of Dolly the Sheep was announced to a startled world in February of 1997, it was plain that the “biotech century” had started four years early. As her uncomprehending face stared out from the covers of the news magazines, one of the biggest stories for a generation gripped the world’s imagination – and focused the thinking of policymakers, lawyers, ethicists, and everyone else concerned with the fact that biotechnology will shape the human future.

The ensuing global debates have gripped many nations, drawn in multilateral organizations like the United Nations and the Council of Europe, brought corporate biotech lobbyists into action, and had the unexpected effect of sparking co-operation between such seemingly strange bedfellows as pro-life activists, environmentalists, and liberal feminists. The Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future is one effect of the cloning debate.

The scientific community was taken almost totally by surprise. Somatic cell nuclear transfer – the technology used to clone Dolly – seemed to be too simple. Experts expected cloning to be possible one day, but not soon and not through this method. Yet Ian Wilmut’s remarkable work at Roslin in Scotland was in due course duplicated by others, and now thousands of mammals have been cloned, in a variety of species.

From the start, the debate was focused not on cloning animals but on cloning people. In 2004, a South Korean team of researchers claimed to have successfully used the process by which Dolly was cloned to create 11 human stem cell lines - something that was feared by many and hoped for by others. However, in late 2005, a scandal erupted over the falsification of these claims and numerous other violations of scientific ethics surrounding this research. Click here for more information.

Some distinguished individuals, as well as libertarians, maverick scientists, and the Raelian UFO cult have argued in favor of cloning to produce children. But most people do not want to see that. The challenge facing public policy has been how to prevent it, and at the same time how to resolve the question of the research use of cloned human embryos. So-called “therapeutic cloning,” intended to produce one-on-one medical treatments through the cloning of an individual patient to obtain stem cells from the embryo, would require the clonal manufacture of hundreds of millions of embryos – if it works. It is so far unproved in animals. Meanwhile, the use of “adult” stem cells – from cord blood or various parts of the adult body – has begun to yield rich clinical results.

In the U.S., the administration supports a comprehensive cloning ban, and the House has passed one by big bipartisan majorities; the parallel bill is held up in the Senate. Individual states have taken various positions. Many foreign countries have enacted comprehensive cloning bans, including Canada, Australia, and Germany, and the United Nations General Assembly is considering an international convention.