Throwing Down the Gauntlet

"Advanced Cell Technology Inc. of Worcester announced its latest advance in human cloning on Sunday, Nov. 25, a quiet news day at the end of a long weekend and a relative lull in the Afghanistan war."

Boston Globe, December 5

"Sunday's announcement that scientists in Massachusetts had begun to make cloned human embryos reverberated through international scientific, religious and legislative circles yesterday, culminating in words of disapproval from the pope and President Bush and a call in the U.S. Senate to pass quickly legislation banning such research."

Washington Post, November 27

"My reaction is that the use of embryos to clone is wrong. We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it, and that's exactly what's taking place, and I have made that position very clear. I haven't changed my mind, and this evidence today, that they're trying to achieve that objective, to grow an embryo in order to extract a stem cell in order for that embryo to die, is bad public policy. Not only that, it's morally wrong, in my opinion."

President George W. Bush, Washington Post, November 27

Given the faster-than-a-speeding-bullet pace at which events are changing, by the time this edition of NRL News lands, there's no telling where the furor unleashed by a little known biotech company will have taken us. As everyone knows, last month Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) employed a savvy media campaign to generate tens of millions of dollars' worth of free publicity for its venture into cloning human embryos.

Depending on your perspective, there was less there than meets the eye or far more than anyone can see this early in our attempt to make a reality of Huxley's nightmarish "Brave New World." There are, of course, at least two major dimensions: the technical and the ethical/moral/philosophical.

ACT actually employed two different cloning techniques in what it insisted was not an attempt to clone a human being that would be allowed to live ("reproductive cloning") but rather to "extract stem cells from cloned human embryos and to use them to create specialized cells, like heart muscle, skin cells or neurons," as the New York Times described ACT President Michael West's explanation. This latter foray into neocannibalism is euphemistically labeled "therapeutic cloning."

The company used the technique that we are most familiar with-- emptying a woman's ovum of its DNA and replacing it with the DNA of an adult skin cell. ACT also used cumulous cells--cells that cling to human ova.

There were no cell divisions in the 11 ova into which the skin cells were infused. Of the eight ova to which cumulus cells were injected, only three divided once or twice.

However, ACT also employed a technique known as parthenogenesis, which attempts to stimulate the ovum to divide without being fertilized with sperm. Most of these 22 "one-parent" ova died within 24-48 hours. Only six survived--the longest lasted some five days.

At one level you can easily say that ACT's performance was a dismal failure. Many critics/skeptics made the point that the company had merely "fiddled" around with some established techniques. Since none of the embryos produced stem cells, all this was much ado about nothing.

Presumably to encourage potential investors and to simultaneously fend off congressional moves to ban all cloning, West made an astonishing claim in December 5 congressional testimony. Even one of the two most fervent proponents of cloning in the Senate - - Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)--figuratively rubbed his eyes in disbelief when West insisted that he expected his company to harvest stem cells extracted from cloned human embryos and from them create specialized tissue to treat diseases within six months!

Most outside of ACT find the timetable absurd. The scientist who created "Dolly" the cloned sheep, Dr. Ian Wilmut, was joined by others at a conference in Washington and all agreed it might well take decades before research in cloning paid off in therapies for diseases. Others argue the intricacies and uniquenesses of human reproduction mean that a human will never be successfully cloned.

Of course the issue was never strictly or even primarily " technical." For deeply concerned critics, treating human embryos as fodder is ethically and morally bereft, no matter how early in development or how they originated.

But how to persuade the wider public to begin to grapple with all this? By helping them untangle two myths spun by proponents. If the public does not understand both the rhetorical misdirection ploys employed by proponents and the truth that there are morally unobjectionable alternatives, all they will have to base their opinions on is nonsense such as West's assertions that ACT's cloning research could ultimately save 3,000 lives a day!

The first we alluded to above: a distinction so spurious it would be laughable were the stakes not so high.

ACT understood that there is minimal support even in the precincts of the ethically tin-eared for cloning a human being who would be permitted to live. But while they say they are unwilling that the cloned embryos they create be brought to term ("reproductive cloning"), ACT and its defenders are serenely indifferent to the prospect of bringing cloned embryonic human beings into existence and then scavenging them for stem cells. They call this exercise in cloning and killing "therapeutic cloning."

On the one hand, elementary logic tells us that strip-mining days-old human life is hardly "therapeutic" for the embryonic human, cloned or otherwise. The insincere but clever we're-not-killing-anyone-because-we-would-never-allow-the-cloned-embryo-to- be-implanted excuse is an ugly extension of the debate over human stem cells research that would require the killing of so- called "spare" embryos. [Stem cells are the very young and as yet undifferentiated cells which "haven't made up their minds what they will be." It is theorized they can be tutored into becoming replacement tissues, even whole organs.]

And, on the other hand, only the willfully blind can overlook the certainty that once the technology is perfected, some biotech entrepreneur will conveniently "lose" a human clone which will be implanted in a woman's uterus.

Myth number two that we must unmask is part and parcel of the insistence that embryonic stem cells extracted from "surplus" embryos are like NAPA components--a source of replacement parts that'll fit any model.

As we have demonstrated repeatedly in Today's News & Views (www.nrlc.org) and in NRL News, all the medical success to date comes from stem cells derived from unobjectionable sources-- umbilical cord blood, placentas, and adult stem cells, particularly those found in bone marrow. The "promise" of stem cells that would require human embryos to be destroyed remains entirely hypothetical.

Proponents of creating/exploiting cloned embryos assume the public has fallen prey to these two myths and then adds a twist. ACT correctly tells us that a recipient's immune system will attack stem cells taken from a human embryo. Solution?

Surely not the acceptable alternatives listed above. No, let's clone a human embryo which will produce stem cells that are " genetically identical to the patient," we're told, and, in theory, unlikely to trigger the body's immune system.

Instead of producing a generic NAPA-like part, this would be more like purchasing a tailor-made component from the dealer-- yourself. On the surface (at least for now), it does appear true that if someone clones embryonic stem cells using his or her own DNA, it would not set off alarms in the body's immune system.

But if there are many markers on the way down the slippery slope, there is something peculiarly evil, something that sets the soul to shuddering, about consciously creating life with the sole purpose of killing it for spare parts. As we try to thwart ACT and kindred efforts, we must keep uppermost in our minds that ACT is a highly sophisticated, aggressive venture capital outfit that plays the media like a fiddle.

The New York Times observed that

Like many other small biotechnology concerns, privately held Advanced Cell Technology attracts investors with promise, not profits. And though Dr. West said the company had just completed a round of fund-raising, he noted that it would have continuing needs for money to finance its work. "We're going to require hundreds of millions in investments," he said, "before we become profitable."

Likewise, its November media blitz demonstrated the same adroitness. According to the Times, ACT

"has a track record of astute dealings with the news media. In interviews, Dr. West acknowledged that scientists for the company had published their results in a little-known online publication--E-biomed: The Journal of Regenerative Medicine-- because E-biomed had agreed to arrange for distribution to coincide with articles in Scientific American and U.S. News and World Report."

It's easier to accept the unacceptable if we allow proponents to set the rhetorical table, calling cloned human embryos "activated eggs" or "embryo-like entities," for example. This habitual, almost reflexive recourse to dehumanizing language, according to Chuck Colson, "is grounded, to our great detriment, in a utilitarian moral calculus that is dangerous and wrong-headed. It's the sort of thinking best left to the likes of Peter Singer and his ilk, who apparently recognize no moral limits. It is, in fact, Kevorkian's bargain.

"The universal revulsion at Dr. Jack Kevorkian's offer to make the organs of his victims [of euthanasia] available for transplantation, despite the fact that so much good could have come of them, was prompted by society's belief that human beings are not reducible to commodities. Mankind has confronted Kervorkian's reasoning throughout its history and embraced it only in folly. We must reject it now."

ACT has thrown down the gauntlet, testing whether we have the moral strength and intellectual wherewithal to resist yet another assault on the most vulnerable couched yet again in the name of relieving "suffering." Nothing better exemplifies the deepest, most inhumane impulses of the past 70 years than the vicious lie that it's okay to kill those we have defined out of existence in order to benefit "real" human beings.

We must draw the line, here and now. With your help, we will!

dave andrusko can be reached at dha1245@juno.com