Cloning Is Not the Issue
Although it may be years before scientists develop the capacity to clone human beings, the techniques of genetic manipulation and artificial reproduction have already advanced far enough to raise serious moral questions.
In March, as politicians reacted to the sensational news that a Scottish scientist had successfully cloned a sheep, Father Albert Moraczewski was asked to testify before legislative committees both in Washington and in Boston, to provide the perspective of a Catholic scientist and theologian.
Father Moraczewski, a Dominican priest who holds a PhD in pharmacology as well as master's degrees in both philosophy and theology, has devoted most of his career to an exploration of the moral issues involved in bio-medical developments. He was the first president of the Pope John XXIII Center for Medical-Moral Research, and still serves that organization as Senior Research Fellow.
Are there any realistic prospects, in the near future, for cloning of humans?
Father Albert Moraczewski: Well, there certainly has been animal cloning. The sheep, Dolly, was an example. There have also been claims that monkeys have been cloned, but that was really a case of embryo fusion. So that wasn't cloning in the same sense as with Dolly; they were using embryonic cells, rather than taking the DNA from mature cells, as in the case of the sheep. Technically Dolly's case was a great leap forward.
Of course we never know whether anything is being done secretly to prepare for human cloning. But there are serious questions about feasibility. There are quite a few steps involved. We are not sure that human DNA from a donor cell will react in the same way that the sheep's DNA reacted. We don't know whether the donor cell and the egg will fuse, as they did in Dolly's case, under electrical stimulation. Even in Dolly's case, there were 277 attempts at cloning, and only one was successfully delivered at term.
So there are many technical problems, and many things are still not clear. In answer to your question, then, although theoretically it is possible, the prospect of cloning humans seems remote.
But then, up until just a few weeks again, wouldn't the prospect of cloning sheep have seemed remote?
Moraczewski: That's right. And it seemed remote precisely because it had been tried, and the efforts had failed. That is, DNA from a mature adult cell had been transplanted, but the experiment did not succeed. The cells were not in the proper condition for transportation. This is the contribution of Dr. Ian Wilmut: he found out that he could put the cells into a quiescent state by starving them, and then he was able to make the transplantation work. But even then, remember, he had one success out of 277 tries—not a very good score. So there are technical difficulties even there which have not really been solved.
What is cloning?
Moraczewski: The word "cloning" has been used in various ways; if you read contemporary literature—both popular and scientific—you will see cloning used in different senses. What we are talking about here is what happened to Dolly: namely taking the DNA from an adult cell—a mature, fully differentiated cell—and placing it into a unfertilized egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed. So now we have the cytoplasm of the egg without a nucleus, plus the cell with an adult nucleus, and they are fused together by an electrical stimulation. The two cells become one cell, with the one nucleus which has the DNA from the mature animal. That nucleus is apparently reprogrammed by the cytoplasm of the egg cell. It is still unknown how this comes about but the cell now acts as if it were an embryonic cell rather than an adult cell. It begins to divide and grow and produce a new organism. But this embryonic organism has the DNA of the mature animal from which the adult cell was originally taken.
So the new organism—the clone—has the same genetic make-up as the original. How is that genetic similarity different from that of identical twins?
Moraczewski: Identical twins come from a common source, but they come at the same time, whereas with the cloning we are describing here there may be many years of difference between the two. That would be one difference. The second difference would be the considerable difference in the environment, both biological and social, in which the individuals were raised.
Also, in the case of natural twinning, with identical twins the process is usually monozygotic, which means that there is one egg which splits. So the cytoplasm is identical, as well as the nucleus. In that sense, natural twins are more closely related, genetically, than clones would be.
From time to time you hear concerns that someone might want to use cloning technology in order to produce 100 Hitlers, or 100 superior warriors, or some such thing. Whatever person you might want to duplicate, it would not be possible to duplicate him exactly. There are a number of differences which would arise. First there are environmental differences in the way he would be raised. Then there are differences in the cytoplasm, which has its own genes—not many genes, but enough to have some influence. So you may be duplicating a part of a person's body, but you could not duplicate the person.
There are some curious practical questions here, too. What is the nature of the relationship between the clone and the donor? Is the donor the father or mother, or a sibling? It isn't clear.
Is it fair to say that scientists today have the capability to take the DNA from an adult cell, and to remove the nucleus from an embryonic cell—so that the technical obstacle to cloning is the difficulty in fusing the two, and getting the cloned cell to grow?
Moraczewski: Yes. People who have the right equipment, the knowledge ,and the training are able to do most of these things. Now we are waiting to see whether, after the breakthrough with Dolly, someone else will be able to do the same thing—to produce another clone.
The problem has been in getting the cloned cell to grow to maturity. There had been earlier experiments, but the new cells did not grow to maturity; there was some defect. In this case Dr. Wilmut was successful. His trick was putting the donor DNA into a quiescent state, so that the cell was no longer dividing and growing; it was in a sort of suspended animation. Then he fused that cell with the empty egg cell, and the cytoplasm of the egg cell had the capacity to reset the program of the DNA in the mature cell.
We have heard a great deal about the moral issues involved in the possibility of cloning human beings. But aren't there other important applications of this technology—applications which could be both morally acceptable and scientifically productive?
Moraczewski: There seems to be some good in the application of cloning to animals other than humans. It has been suggested that this is one way to take care of endangered species. Or this could be a way of improving the quality of a species. For example if you had a very good bull and you wanted that animal to be replicated, you could do so, presumably, just by taking that animal's DNA and transplanting it into the empty egg cell of a cow. You would then produce an animal that would be very close to the original donor of the DNA—the bull. So you could have many copies of that high-quality bull—or of cow which produced more milk, or sheep that produced fine wool, and so on. Again, this possibility is somewhere on the horizon; we haven't reached that point yet.
Is this technology applicable exclusively to animals, or can it be used with other forms of life?
Moraczewski: Well, I'm not aware that they have done it with plants. Of course, there has always been a lot of breeding, producing hybrid plants as well as animals. But that has always been done using the ordinary means of reproduction.
Scientists have modified bacteria. That has been done by the same process as cloning—not by introducing the entire DNA of a cell—but by using a particular strand of DNA. For example, a segment of DNA from a human, which controlled the production of insulin, was transposed onto the E-coli bacterium. So now the bacterium was able to produce something which it could not produce naturally, thanks to the human gene which had been introduced. Thus we had a new way to produce human insulin.
The same thing has been done with human growth factor, and with interferon—a protein which is capable of fighting viruses. In each case, bacteria have been transformed genetically, by the introduction of human DNA, to produce things which are useful to human beings. That is one of the purposes of this contemporary technology: to alter animals so that they might produce something useful for human beings.
At this point it is difficult to speculate—to differentiate between what is possible and what is not possible. Just today I was reading in Science, the weekly journal, about what is called regeneration—the regeneration of tissues. Some organisms can produce a new leg or a new arm, if one is cut off; others cannot. We humans can regenerate our liver; if part of the liver is damaged, it will rebuild itself, while other tissues—brain cells, for instances—will not. If we could discover the factors involved, that could be enormously useful. If some tissue had been damaged by physical trauma or disease, it might be possible to regenerate that tissue. This is one of the frontiers of medicine. It may not be as dramatic as some other issues, but this question of regeneration is closer to the horizon today.
This is an area in which more research will surely be done, and as far as I can see the technology involved should not contravene any moral principles. It would really be very good if we could regenerate some of our tissues: spleen, heart, brain, lung, muscle. And it would be especially good if we could regenerate nerve tissues. Think of all the spinal injuries, in which the nerves are permanently damaged; perhaps we could address that question. We have scientists today who are working on that problem: trying to learn how our central nervous system functions, and how neurons could be regenerated.
From time to time we hear stories—perhaps fanciful stories—about growing human ears on the bodies of pigs, and similar possibilities. Are such notions scientifically possible?
Moraczewski: Well, that was something that some scientists had hoped to achieve, if cloning became a possibility: to be able to regenerate a full organ—to grow a liver or a heart or a spleen independently of a body, and then transplant that organ. That could be possible—both practically and ethically.
As for growing an ear on a pig, that is not something that has been done. Someone might take an ear that had been damaged, and temporarily grow it on another animal, but that sort of thing is not being done on any large scale.
However, animals are being used for some related purposes. Take, for instance, the cases of transgenic pigs. There scientists are trying to develop organs in the pigs which could be used in transplantations, and accepted by humans. This is a case not of cloning but of genetic engineering. The challenge is to develop the surface antigens—by which the body recognizes tissue as either foreign or friendly—in the pig, so that the organs could be accepted in transplants.
Again, at this point that process seems theoretically possible. And again it does not seem to entail any moral problems—at least at this point. I am always careful to hedge on these issues, because until the whole process is clearly delineated, we don't know what intermediate steps might be involved, and so we don't know whether the entire process would be morally acceptable. But the basic notion—modifying an animal so that its tissues could be acceptable in a human being, as a way of solving some of the problems of organ transplants and tissue rejection—in itself would not be ethically objectionable.
What sort of distinctions should we be making—both in moral and in scientific terms—between cloning and genetic engineering?
Moraczewski: Genetic engineering is perhaps the more fundamental question, because ordinarily in cloning not much is being changed, other than the method of reproduction. Through genetic engineering, however, the characteristics of an animal can be changed. On one hand, with the help of genetic engineering we may be able to correct diseases. On the other hand, theoretically we could develop some special capacity, in the effort to create another Mozart of Leonardo da Vinci. That could be, at least theoretically, a possibility.
By genetic engineering—by actually manipulating either specific genes or specific sets of genes within an individual—we have the potential for restructuring the human person. But fortunately or unfortunately, we don't know too much yet about genes. There are some cases in which one gene controls one protein, but many of our behavioral characteristics are influenced by many genes, as well as many other factors. We don't yet know, for instance, what genes are involved in intelligence. That would be a particularly difficult question, because no doubt intelligence is influenced by the interaction of many different genes, along with the environment and other psycho-social factors.
Again, there are some things that we do know about human genetics—certain diseases which can be determined, or certain characteristics such as the color of the eyes or the hair. There are about 4,000 characteristics that are influenced by an identified gene. But even in those cases we are working in a very complex field. Since humans have 100,000 genes, it is difficult to isolate any one gene, the way we might be able to isolate a gene in an experimental subject like a fruit fly, with its much simpler genetic structure.
You must understand, too, that when I say there are 4,000 conditions that are known to be related to a particular gene, that does not exhaust our understanding of the genes in question. Many genes have multiple functions, which have not yet been discovered.
How quickly is that stock of knowledge growing—the knowledge of the effects of human genes?
Moraczewski: The Human Genome Project seems to be on track, and the scientists involved in that project gave themselves 15 years, starting in 1990, to do the work of cataloguing all of the 100,000 human genes. Keep in mind, too, that we can really only say that we have roughly 100,000 genes. Even the exact number is not known yet; the estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000. So we are not close, at this point, to any accurate accounting.
If and when that accounting is made, could it be theoretically feasible to custom-design a human being? Or is that sheer fantasy?
Moraczewski: I would not say it is absurd, but it is a long way off. I wouldn't be able to put a figure on it; I don't have any data to tell me how far in the future that question might arise. But I would say that, because of the tremendous complexity of various characteristics, to be able to design a human body would seem to be something very far away. If it is ever possible, perhaps it would be in another century.
As you know, scientists are generally reluctant to look that far ahead, since surprising discoveries can be made that can shorten a path. On the other hand we can discover things that lengthen the path. No long ago we thought we would have energy by fusion instead of fission but we are not anywhere near that breakthrough as yet. And that is a much simpler problem than the biological problem.
In the much shorter term, are we close to being able to say that we can identify a certain gene which controls a weakness for certain diseases, and to correct that problem?
Moraczewski: Yes, much closer. We are discovering some genes which, when there is an alteration or mutation, and the genetic product is not made properly, it leads to specific diseases or disorders. A certain number of these genes have been identified; the gene for cystic fibrosis is one such case. But even when we find the connection, there remains the difficulty of correcting the problem.
The major problem here, once the target has been identified, is to produce it, correct it, and put the right cells in place. That is a very difficult process. And that is one reason why we began experimenting with embryonic tissue. It is much easier to treat problems at that level of development, rather than with adult tissue.
If we could identify a gene which, because of mutation, was going to lead to a weakness or disease, would there be any moral arguments against using that knowledge?
Moraczewski: The Pope has addressed himself to that topic, and made a distinction between therapeutic genetic intervention and enhancement—in other words, intervention undertaken to improve something which is already healthy. He would say, generally speaking, there is no problem—indeed it is a good thing—to correct a disorder, a disease. It is another thing to try to enhance something, to try to make it better than normal.
Sometimes it is not easy to make that distinction. What would be "better" in terms of eyesight, for example? Should we correct eyes that are simply weak? What about trying to enhance our memory?
Sometimes it is not even particularly easy to define what constitutes a disease. Take the problem of sickle-cell anemia. In our American culture, that is a disease, a handicap which interferes with a person's life. But in certain other areas of the world such as Africa, where malaria is epidemic, we have found that it is actually a protective device; a person with sickle-cell anemia is more resistant to malaria. The malaria develops within the blood cells, you see, in such a way that when the blood cell is modified by sickle-cell anemia, the malaria is prevented from developing.
What are the moral issues we should keep in mind as these new scientific techniques are developed?
Moraczewski: What I see is humanity trying in a sense to build a paradise on earth, through technological means. We already control our temperature and humidity by air conditioning, and we do this to make our life more comfortable. Fine. But then we also try to change the terms of our own human nature, to create a perfect human being—or rather what we call a genetically perfect human being—so that we are no longer subject to diseases or to the degeneration of old age. So we would go out smiling, as it were. And then even beyond that we seem to be seeking immortality—at least a kind of immortality—by cryo-preservation, by organ transplantation, by using all kinds of things that will stave off death, so that we can seem to live indefinitely.
Whether these goals are pursued consciously or unconsciously, I think they form part of the overall ambition which seems to drive humanity. And that's not how the Lord designed us. Death is a natural part of life, and the gateway to eternal life. We have to go through that door; we can't find eternal life on this earth.
There is an interesting Greek myth about the goddess Aurora, the goddess of dawn. She fell in love with a mortal by the name of Tithonus, and she had asked her father Jupiter to give him immortal life. So he did—except that he did not give him immortal youth. So Tithonus kept getting older and older and first gray-haired and then white-haired, and very weak. So Aurora cast him off, because he was no longer of interest to her.
Eternal life is not simply immortality; it is more than immortality, and more even than eternal youth; it involves something else, and that is sharing of God's very life. So death is still part of providential pathway for human beings.
Scientists would argue, however, that it is inherently good to pursue knowledge.
Moraczewski: Yes, but there are two branches of knowledge which can be distinguished here. We can have knowledge which inspires contemplation—knowledge which gives us more and more insight into reality as an expression of God, as a manifestation of his action in the universe. Then there is the other branch of knowledge which leads to technology and control. That is what we are looking at here, more and more often: the desire to control our environment and even ourselves. I think that is where the danger arises.
When God said told Adam to "subdue the earth," that was a delegated stewardship. There is a limitation to it; there is a responsibility and an accountability. It is not spelled out, and that is something that humanity has struggled over the ages—to find the proper limits to human power. That is a complicated question, and moral theologians constantly wrestle with it. But if we at least recognize that we do not have unlimited power—that we just can't do anything that we want, but it has to be in accordance with God's will as far as we can determine through the light of revelation and the teaching of the Church—that is a great step forward.
When Satan approached Adam and Eve and offered the fruit, he said "take this fruit... and you will be like God." Well, God wants us to be like him, to be God-like, but in his way, not in our way. That has been the constant struggle. We have been always wanting to do good things our way. That is the struggle that we need to undertake—constantly assessing, as far as we can determine, the limits of our stewardship.
Really, then, the ethical questions involved in cloning and genetic engineering are questions which arise in Genesis.
Moraczewski: In a sense, yes. And there is another factor here: Genesis also indicated the means of human reproduction. In Chapter 2, when God takes Eve from his side, Adam says, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh..." Then the story continues: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh." That term "one flesh" is understood to mean intercourse. So husband and wife are joined, and through intercourse children are procreated. There you have the means by which other human beings are to be brought into the world—that is, by a family: husband and wife engaged in the conjugal act and the child born of that woman. That seems to be quite clear in the rest of the Scripture as well.
Then this means that cloning, as a way of producing another human being, is completely opposed to God's will. We would be exceeding our stewardship, exceeding our mastery, if we produced a human being by other means. And the same logic would apply to in vitro fertilization—which in a sense opened the door to the cloning process.
The direct line connecting cloning to in vitro fertilization is not a matter of technology, but of orientation. We've had thousands of babies born through in vitro fertilization. Families have been enriched by a new life, and so many people are prepared to say that it is a good thing. We still have to maintain it is not a good thing; it is contrary to the proper way of bringing human life into the world.
Of course we also know that there have been a number of problems associated with in vitro fertilization. In Great Britain there were over 3,000 frozen embryos which nobody wanted; in this country it is even more than that. (We don't know the numbers; someone has estimated it might be 25,000. But we have many more clinics than the British, so undoubtedly we have more of these frozen embryos as well.) So there is a major problem there. And yet the public has come to accept and tolerate in vitro fertilization. Perhaps the public will, in due time, grow accustomed to cloning as well.
The argument has been made that the genie is out of the bottle, and it is impossible to put it back—that if cloning is not done here, it will just be done somewhere else. That may be true. However, it doesn't mean that we should stop raising objections, because if the general public gets a true understanding of the implications of all this "progress," we may be able to slow it down, and even to stop it at some point. In any case it is our duty to speak out.
Is there is a possibility that as these trends in genetic engineering continue, Christians will become a minority, refusing to accept forms of biological tinkering which the majority considers routine?
Moraczewski: Well, our Lord said it that we are not of this world. If we were of this world the world would accept us. We have to remember that Jesus certainly did not win a popularity contest. I don't think His followers should expect anything less. We are not going to look at numbers; the world will be against us.
However, being a minority or a majority doesn't make us right or wrong, by any means. The Christian, and the Catholic in particular, has to be ready to accept opposition. But it is important that whatever position we hold can be reasonably defended. Our Church is trying to protect the human dignity. We have to be truly knowledgeable of what our faith teaches us.
In this particular field, it is important for people to be aware of the documents of the Church—Donum Vitae, for example, and Evangelium Vitae. If you will pardon a commercial message, the Pope John Center tries to keep people informed on biological questions, and to approach those questions in accordance with the Church's teachings.
St. Peter tells, "Know the reasons for your faith." I think that is where I would begin, in counseling Catholics about how they should begin making moral distinctions about the latest biological developments. Know your faith.
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