The ethics of Therapeutic Cloning
"…So the process of 'therapeutic cloning' or 'cell therapies'
as described below requires the creation and destruction of cloned
human embryos. There has been a long-running debate and there are
widely differing views about the ethical and moral issues raised by
this research which are primarily concerned with the origin of the
cells and the way in which they are derived."
1) The Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust's mission is to foster and promote research with
the aim of improving human and animal health. The Trust works to achieve
this mission by funding excellent biomedical research, in the UK and
internationally, in areas that the Trust feels are of particular importance
or where traditional funding streams are too scarce.
The Trust considers that stem cell research offers tremendous potential
for the development of new treatments for a wide range of debilitating
or life threatening diseases and conditions such as diabetes, cancer,
heart disease, rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, Parkinson's disease,
Alzheimer's disease and stroke.
There are a number of sources of stem cells but to begin with it
is likely that the greatest benefits will be realised by using those
cells derived from very early-stage embryos, just a few days after
fertilisation of the egg, as these have the greatest potential to
develop into other types of cell and tissue.
The use of human embryos in biomedical research raises a number of
social and ethical issues. However, the Trust considers that broadening
the scope of the research, that is permitted under the law, to allow
stem cell research for the benefit of human health is ethically justifiable,
in view of the new understanding and treatments it could offer for
conditions that affect so many people. The Trust therefore endorses
the recommendations of the report of the Chief Medical Officer's Expert
Group on Stem Cell Research, Stem Cell Research: Medical Progress
with Responsibility (August 2000). In particular the Trust supports
the main recommendation to amend the Human Fertilisation and Embryology
(HFE) Act 1990 to permit the use of human embryos for research to
improve the understanding or treatment of non-congenital diseases,
including research using embryonic stem cells.
The Trust also supports the recommendation by the Expert Group that
reproductive cloning should not be permitted. Further, the Trust would
not support any research which fell outside the legislative framework
that is eventually decided by Parliament as a result of this debate.
The Trust would be keen to work with other biomedical research funders,
both public and private, to ensure that research involving human embryos
for the development of treatments for disease is conducted to the
highest possible standard under the regulation of appropriate legislation
and guidelines. We anticipate that, if the recommended amendments
to the HFE Act 1990 are voted through in Parliament, the Human Fertilization
and Embryology Authority (HFEA) would develop specific guidelines
relating to the derivation of stem cells from human embryos. We would
expect these guidelines to address the issue of obtaining the explicit
consent of individuals whose eggs and sperm are used to create the
embryos, specifically to allow their use in research to derive stem
cells, and help subsequent research to be carried out responsibly
and transparently within the law.
Finally, research using stem cells taken from aborted fetuses is
not covered by the HFEA. Guidelines and standards for this work are
covered by the Polkinghorne Code of Practice on the Use of Fetuses
and Fetal Material in Research and Treatment (1989). The Chief Medical
Officer's Expert Group recommended a review of these guidelines to
consider whether specific consent to the use of fetal tissue for the
extraction of stem cells should be required. The Wellcome Trust would
welcome such a review which in addition might consider recommendations
for a mechanism for auditing such research.
The Wellcome Trust Interim Position Statement on Stem Cell research.
2) The Nuffield Council
An extract from Stem Cell Therapy: the ethical issues - Nuffield
Council on Bioethics
The use of donated embryos to produce ES cells
The debate about the moral status of the human embryo has focused
on the question of whether the embryo should be treated as a person,
or, at least, a potential person.
If the embryo is so considered, then it will be morally impermissible
to use it merely as a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself.
This would preclude both embryo research and any other procedure
not directed to the benefit of that actual embryo. The removal of
cells from an embryo would therefore not be morally permissible, regardless
of whether these cells were to be used for the benefit of some other
person.
This issue was discussed extensively prior to the passing of the
HFE Act. Parliament accepted that embryo research is morally acceptable
for specific purposes provided that it is limited to the fourteen
days following fertilisation and provided that no embryo which is
subjected to research procedures is re-implanted in the uterus.
It did not, however, express a view on the moral legitimacy of cultivating
cells from embryos and using them for therapeutic purposes.
A donated embryo has been created with a view to implantation in
the uterus. Once it is not implanted, it no longer has a future and,
in the normal course of events, it will be allowed to perish or be
donated for research.
We consider that the removal and cultivation of cells from such an
embryo does not indicate lack of respect for the embryo. Indeed, such
a process could be regarded as being analogous to tissue donation.
Copies of the full report can be downloaded from http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/bioethics
3) The Church of Scotland Society, Religion and Technology Project
Specific Ethical Issues
- Whether having decided that the reproductive cloning of human
beings is unacceptable, it is impermissible to use nuclear transfer
procedures to reate cloned human embryos for any purpose…
- Whether it is permissible to reprogram a human embryo away from
totipotency, with the end of producing a baby, to developing only
certain types of cells..
- Whether the risks involved in the research can be considered
acceptable.
The Church of Scotland General Assembly considered a range of embryological
issues in 1995 and cloning of both humans and animals in 1997.
Views of church members are divided on the former issue. Some regard
embryo research as absolutely impermissible, on the grounds that full
human status must be accorded to the embryo. For such the answer to
all the above questions is that they would be impermissible.
The position taken by the 1995 General Assembly, however, affirmed
the sanctity of the human embryo from conception but granted that
there were limited circumstances under which such research might reluctantly
be allowed prior to the primitive streak stage, bearing in mind the
seriousness of certain medical conditions.
These were primarily seen as infertility and genetically transmitted
diseases. Firstly,it seems illogical to create a cloned human embryo
knowing full well one would have to destroy it on ethical grounds,
because it was unethical to allow it to go to term to produce a cloned
baby.
Secondly, there is a gradualism argument. Once cloned human embryos
were created,there would be strong pressures to go to the next step
and allow them to be implanted, whether legally or not.
Instrumental Use of the Embryo
The third argument is one of instrumentality. The intent is to the
possibility of treating extremely serious diseases in another human
being, but is this sufficient cause to justify the application? Ethically
we recoil at the idea of killing a human being in order to provide
spare parts for another, so should we allow an early embryo to be
destroyed to provide cells for potential transplantation? To the extent
that embryo research may be allowed for the above limited purposes
a measure of instrumentality towards the embryo has been accepted.
The question is whether this constitutes an allowance for all instrumental
uses, or only some. In the applications to date, it would seem that
the embryo is being treated as an entity in itself, and the research
upon it as a means of better understanding of embryo development,
fertilisation and genetic disease.
The proposed research would seem to reduce the embryo from being
an entity in itself to having only the status of a resource from which
convenient parts are taken.
Copies of this article and other articles looking at the issues
surrounding cloning can be found at http://www.srtp.org.uk/cloning.shtml
4) Genetic interest group
When the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was passed in 1990,
the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton penned an article entitled
'Embryo Farmers: the children of Mengele'.
The case against using cloned embryos in research made from this
quarter today is essentially the same as the argument made against
the use of all embryos in research and IVF procedures back then.
And in a sense, the argument for it is also very similar, a point
the Government should note. As the philosopher John Harris puts it:
'If it is acceptable to produce spare embryos in pursuit of successful
pregnancy then it must be justifiable to produce them in pursuit
of something plausibly of the same moral magnitude. Saving a life-in-being
surely comes into that category.'
GIG - Genetic Interest Group Policy Paper Further details can be
found at http://www.gig.org.uk
5) Comment on Reproductive Ethics
Proposals for research on cloned human embryos up to 14 days, followed
by compulsory destruction, would have the paradoxical effect of making
it a crime not to destroy human life ...Hundreds of thousands of human
embryos would be destroyed in such research ...If the cloned human
is of so little value at this early stage, how could we ensure that
he or she would be respected if allowed to grow to a later stage of
development? ...Already a clone is perceived as a substandard, second-class
human being, otherwise we could not contemplate some of these proposals
...Would the cloned child who was permitted to survive perceive him
or herself as inferior?
Comment On Reproductive Ethics. Further details from CORE are
available from Comment on Reproductive Ethics PO Box 4593, London SW3
6XE tel: 020 7351 1055
6) LIFE
'The Nuffield Council proposals amount to a clone-and-kill policy.
Once the stem cell has been removed the donor embryo is killed. For
the Nuffield Council to argue that it does not oppose the cannibalising
of human embryos in this way shows how little respect its members
have for both human life and cherished ethical principles.'
'Deliberately to kill innocent human beings so that patients can
extend their lives exploits and discriminates against vulnerable human
life in a way that is incompatible with justice and the respect due
to every human being regardless of how big or small he/she is.'
'Even within its own utilitarian framework the Nuffield Council should
have acknowledged the danger that some of these cloned human embryos
will end up being implanted in the wombs of surrogate mothers - ushering
in full pregnancy cloning.'
'Time and again the same handful of scientists with vested interests
have dominated debate in these vital areas and prevented open discussion
of the issues from all sides.'
LIFE's Research Director Peter Garrett 6/4/00 Read Life's article
- 'Abortion and Cloning: Some New Evasions' (by Prof John Finnis) available
to download at http://www.lifeuk.org/speech2.html
7) A Student
"Currently, I believe the only person that can make an accusation
on cloning's unnaturalness, is a native who lives on an island living
in harmony with nature, independent of all technologies and advancements."
This is a quote taken from a simple and accessible website written
by a student http://members.tripod.com/~cloning/intro.htm
8) Hannah M Vick
The most important aspect of the debate over the use of embryonic
stem cells in research is the fact that killing embryos for research
purposes is unethical… Beyond the controversy surrounding the
"personhood" of embryonic life, all concerned parties must
recognise that human embryos are not simply tissue to be researched.
The underlying utilitarian belief that some humans need to be sacrificed
for the betterment of others is morally and ethically wrong. The rationale
used to justify the destruction of embryos for advancements in medical
research and development is the same rationale used to justify the
syphilis experiments conducted on African-Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama.
This same utilitarian justification was used in the medical research
Nazi doctors performed in Dachau and Aushwitz. Human beings, at any
stage of development, should not be drafted for research without their
permission-no matter what the supposed justification.
Furthermore, "even if an individual's death is believed to be
otherwise imminent, we still do not have a license to engage in lethal
experimentation, just as we may not experiment on death row prisoners
or harvest their organs without their consent."
The moral and ethical problems of embryonic stem cell research make
its continuation unacceptable. The moral consequence of compromising
the life of a human being does not and cannot outweigh potential medical
benefits in the future.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Ethically Wrong Treatment of the
Tiniest of Humans by Hannah M. Vick
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