The cloning clash
Does the world need cloning research? UN members tackle a topic that leaves many uneasy.
Around the globe there is nearly universal agreement that "reproductive cloning" - the effort to create cloned human beings - is wrong.
But when it comes to "therapeutic cloning" - developing stem cells from human embryos that could be used to treat diseases - opinion is far more divided. And that division is the controversial breach into which the United Nations legal committee will step Thursday in New York as it votes on a resolution to ban human cloning.
Although any UN vote would be largely symbolic, there is considerable global support for putting the international body on record as opposing reproductive cloning, which raises significant questions of both safety and ethics.
But reaching any kind of agreement on therapeutic cloning is likely to prove an elusive goal.
Cloning involves inserting animal or human DNA into an unfertilized egg whose own nucleus has been removed. In reproductive cloning the embryo would be placed in a surrogate mother and would develop into an exact physical replica of the DNA donor.
Therapeutic cloning produces and then destroys embryos only a few days old in order to reap their stem cells, which medical scientists believe eventually can be used to treat diseases such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's disease, hemophilia, spinal injuries, and stroke. Stem cells are like blank pages of a book which can be written upon, capable of becoming any kind of body tissue. They could be used to reproduce defective organs, for example.
The international community is sharply divided over the issue of therapeutic cloning, with three plans likely to be considered Thursday.
The Bush administration has strongly backed a Costa Rican proposal for a comprehensive ban on both reproductive and therapeutic cloning.
But a Belgian proposal to prohibit only reproductive cloning and leave individual countries free to either ban or regulate therapeutic cloning has also gathered strong support from countries such as Britain, Germany, and France.
At the same time, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, representing 57 Muslim countries, favors a postponement of the vote for one or two years to study the issue.
Animal cloning - which has been achieved with limited success, sometimes producing defective clones with various abnormalities - would not be considered in the ban debated Thursday.
But when it comes to human reproductive cloning, most within and without the global scientific community find the practice unpalatable. Concerns over the safety of the cloned individual (especially in light of the problems encountered in animal cloning) are paramount, as are the enormous difficulties in achieving such an operation.
While sheep and cows have been successfully cloned, primates, such as chimpanzees or gorillas, have not, indicating that human cloning may prove to be extremely difficult.
The Raelians, a quasi-religious group based in Switzerland, claim to have cloned five human babies in late 2002 and early 2003. But the group has never produced any conclusive proof of the births.
People have a "general moral queasiness" about reproductive cloning, says Kenneth Goodman, the founder and director of the bioethics center at the University of Miami. Some ethicists call it "the yuck factor." It creates human life "in a fundamentally novel way," and there's "something narcissistic" about it, he says.
That queasiness "points toward compelling moral reasons" against reproductive cloning. "It doesn't serve any of the traditional values of medical research" such as treating disease or reducing pain, he says.
From a Christian perspective, "I think you can make a case for reproductive cloning as 'hubris,' the sin of pride," says Suzanne Holland, who teaches courses on bioethics at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and has co-edited a book on the stem-cell debate.
The debate over therapeutic cloning, however, much more closely mirrors the controversy over abortion. The crucial question is when life begins and whether a human life is being taken in the process of harvesting the stem cells. Many Christian groups, including the Roman Catholic church, argue that is the case.
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