Cloning conundrum

>> Margaret Somerville inspires "ethics talk" in The Ethical Canary

by NAOMI BLOCH

Human cloning. To those who've seen Sixth Day it smacks of imitation Verhoeven-style science fiction. Others might think of Dr. Evil's Mini-me or perhaps a brigade of blonde, blue-eyed monsters with swastikas on their arms. But the fact is that human cloning is a scientific reality, and the general public is far behind in its understanding of these advancements.

The difficulty in remaining ignorant about scientific advances is that it leaves the public out of the discussion when it comes ethical choices in our brave new world. And it's the need to engage the public in what ethicist Margaret Somerville calls "ethics talk," which inspired her latest book The Ethical Canary, where she discusses health-related issues from euthanasia to male circumcision to cloning.

"I think it's extremely dangerous for the public to feel they're excluded," says Somerville. "The media is now an important vehicle through which our global society will find its shared values and shared ethics."

Currently, countries around the world are beginning to pass laws on cloning, both reproductive and therapeutic. Human cloning involves taking tissue and an ovum from a donor, and replacing the nucleus of the ovum with the DNA from the tissue. When these cells are activated, they have the same exact chromosomal makeup as the original donor. If you allow this basic form to gestate, you create a human baby identical to the donor--called reproductive cloning. This prospect seems scary to most people. But the trick is that during the very initial stage of development, whether in a naturally fertilized egg or in a clone, the genetic blueprint of any tissue or organ already exists, and cloned cells can be manipulated to express only the gene for a particular organ or tissue, which can then be used medically (therapeutic cloning).

Somerville uses the term "embryo" explicitly, and feels those who do not are trying to avoid ethical conflict by dehumanizing the clones. "When you talk about cloning an embryo for the-rapeutic purposes," says Somerville, "what they do is they make an embryo and then they kill the embryo by taking stem cells, and those stem cells can form all the organs or tissues of the human body."

Certainly, for those who believe that abortion and, in fact, birth control pills are fundamentally wrong, the early-stage embryos manipulated to produce organs instead of babies are a termination of life. Since the definition of embryo includes a fertilized egg that is not yet implanted in the uterus lining (the stage some scientists equate with therapeutic cloning), the very act of using birth control would suggest that women are killing embryos all the time.

Despite the fact that Somerville feels early-stage abortion should be legal and is a personal choice of the pregnant woman, she also believes that cloning for any purpose is unnatural and wrong.

"Normally, the only way to create human life is sexually. We're the first humans ever who've been able to transmit human life to a new human asexually. That's replication, not reproduction. What I'm saying is I don't think it's respectful of transmission and I don't think it's respectful of human beings." And if a world-renowned ethicist is faced with such conflicting views, it's safe to say that when the general public engages in 'ethics talk,' we'll be talking for quite a while.

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