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Separating the Sheep from the Pigs: A Sermon on
Cloning
Reverend Brian J. Kiely,
Unitarian Church of Edmonton, April 2, 2000
This is one of those “I don’t know” sermons. As
I look at this issue of cloning and the larger question of incredibly
rapid advances in the fields of genetics and cellular biology, the
only thing of which I am certain is that I am uncertain. But that’s
okay, for I find I rather distrust certainty, especially when it
is certainty about the shape of the future. So let me state unequivocally
and with a high degree of certainty, that I have not yet formed a
final opinion about the moral and ethical implications of cloning.
Please join me now in an uncertain journey. Let us feel our way
along together and in the process, may we find a way to increase
our awareness if not necessarily our degree of certainty.
Over my desk I have pinned a delightful Stella Clarke watercolour
rendition of a phrase by William James, “A new idea is first
condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until, finally
it becomes what everyone knows.”
When Dolly the sheep was cloned back in 1997, it was a new idea.
Oh, certainly people had talked of cloning for a longtime. It’s
even been lampooned in movies by Woody Allen and Michael Keaton and
taken with deadly seriousness by the evil Gregory Peck in “The
Boys From Brazil”, but in terms of real life technological
advances, cloning was a new and startling secret revealed. And since
it was a new idea, it was, as James predicted, roundly condemned.
Or as Oliver Morton suggested in our reading, “The Yuk factor
governs the initial public response to almost every biomedical advance
that can easily be understood as being unnatural.”
In a CNN poll conducted shortly after Dolly’s appearance on
the world stage, 89% said cloning humans was morally unacceptable,
66% were against cloning animals, 69% were frightened by the whole
idea and a whopping 74% said that “cloning is against God’s
will.”
A few religious authorities from Judaism, Islam and the Vatican
chimed in shortly after all decrying the idea of cloning in humans
and animals alike. Some even managed to execute a full twisting two
and a half gainer of logic by deciding that since a cloned child
would not be the product of sperm and ovum, it would be born without
a soul. It’s worth noting that more sober and thoughtful theologians
of all stripes have more recently issued statements that better balance
concern and benefit.
The shrillness of the negative response predictably produced an
equal and opposite reaction from the “We have no right to stifle
scientific research on any grounds!” school.
Well, it’s three years later. Some laws limiting human cloning
are on the books, and moratoria until the ethical issues are resolved
are being discussed. Meanwhile researchers around the world have
managed to produce a veritable barnyard full of animals and have
discovered a few surprising facts. Let’s start with a look
at what cloning is and why it’s being explored. Then we can
consider the viewpoints pro and con.
According to Oliver Morton, “”The most important thing
about Dolly is that a nucleus was taken from a cell in a laboratory
test tube and put into an egg.” No sperm was involved, a prospect
that may make the more paranoid among men a little nervous. This
new ovum - or the 26 ova to be precise - were then implanted in the
uteri of 13 ewes. Only one egg survived the gestation and Dolly was
born. Today she appears to be healthy in all but one respect, to
which I will return, and has even reproduced in the more traditional
manner.
While Dolly may have been the most dramatic example, cloning has
been the subject of scientific experimentation for some time, and
in the three short years since Dolly appeared, we have successfully
cloned monkeys, calves, pigs, goats here in Canada and now even a
human embryo. And in related headlines we have also made giant strides
in manipulating the DNA of a variety of grains, fruits and vegetables
and have made enormous progress in mapping the human genome, stirring
up yet another debate about who has the copyrights for these most
basic building blocks of life.
Why is all this happening and happening now? Well it’s happening
now because as they used to say each week in the “Six Million
Dollar Man”, “We have the technology” or at least
the beginnings of it.
The “why” question seems to have a three part answer:
First comes the curiosity that has always driven scientific research.
Scientists can no more abide unanswered questions than Nature can
love a vacuum. Jennifer Lobo of Peregrine Pharmaceuticals suggests, “I
don’t think most scientists are thinking about ethical issues
when exploring new technology. They’re more concerned with
solving part of a puzzle...solving the puzzle is the focus.”
Second comes altruism. The initial goal in cloning Dolly and other
animals was for human medical purposes. Researchers have managed
to transfer certain human genes into these animals. The milk of these “transgenic” animals
as they are called, contains higher levels of factor IX used to treat
haemophilia and alpha - antitrypsin used to combat cystic fibrosis.
In other words, one goal of cloning was to create environments where
human medicines could be produced more readily. Similarly experiments
with pigs have been stepped up in hopes of creating modified organs
which could be transplanted into humans with a high degree of success.
Today, thousands of people die annually for want of a transplantable
organ.
Other medical promises of this technology include better understanding
of our own genetic make-up which could lead to the eradication of
a variety of inherited disorders. There are substantial indications
that cloning would help childless couples have children bearing their
own genes in a process that would simply be a modification of today’s
in vitro fertilization technology. In contrast, genetic disorders
like Hodgkin’s disease and predispositions for breast cancer
in the parents could be screened out of their children.
In another approach, cloning human cells holds the promise of helping
us fight infections and cancers in our own bodies. A few of our cells
could be stored for years and then modified to fight a specific disease,
grown and reinjected into our own bodies when we need them. Theoretically
such modified cells could even allow us to regenerate nerve and brain
tissue damaged in traumatic accidents, restoring mental acuity and
even overcoming paraplegia.
Most of these promises remain theoretical at this stage of course,
untried and untested. Scientists think they know the potential benefits,
but there has not yet been a great deal of scientific work done on
what the unseen costs might be.
The third and most obvious reason to explore cloning is money. Oddly,
most of the articles I came across ignored this motivation, but it
is there. Bio-tech venture capitalists don't fund this kind of research
for their health, but rather to exploit ours. Their goal is to produce
marketable drugs, treatments and technologies for our physical health...and
their financial well being.
Now I have nothing against drug companies making a reasonable profit
from bringing helpful heath products to market, but I will confess
to a certain wariness about methods and public statements. More than
altruism and curiosity, money has an awful way of skewing conversations,
principles and legislation. I find it a little harder to give my
trust when money becomes a driver in the equation. At this stage
of the debate, I look at the magnificent promises of genetic and
cloning technologies with a sceptical eye and a wait and see mind
set.
Over the last three years the opposition to cloning technology has
solidified as well.
Of course the “against God’s will” argument still
tops the list, but it is an argument that no longer carries much
weight in rational discourse. The astronomical discoveries of Copernicus
and Galileo were against God’s will at one time, and the church
has since had to apologize for that. In the 1960's heart transplants
were considered against God’s will because some theologians
thought souls would get lost or confused. I am unaware of any major
religion that still opposes transplant technology. In fact, this
God’s will thing, aside from being deucedly difficult to determine
with certainty, could be used to oppose any medical treatment at
all. After all any vaccination, surgery or other invasive therapy
artificially prolongs life. If God’s will approves one procedure,
why not another? Unless God is made in the arbitrary image and likeness
of Ralph Klein, this divine Medicare plan must cover either all medical
marvels or none of them. Though I won’t claim to know God’s
will for certain, I doubt He would support such a two-tiered system
where we could use some technologies but not others.
A second and more valid concern is that genetic technology could
tempt us back into eugenics - the manipulation of traits to make
our children not only healthier - which most would agree is a benefit
- but stronger, faster, smarter, better looking, male instead of
female, straight instead of Gay etc. etc. into whatever contemporary
trends define as the ‘perfect human being’. We have already
seen parents using amino centesis to determine the gender of their
child in utero and then aborting the fetus when it’s not the
gender they desire. In the field of in vitro fertilization today,
women are already able to select certain traits in the donor sperm.
In cloning, some degree of eugencis would come into play, but how
much? Governments could work at creating a class of super soldiers,
or a big, strong and yet docile underclass of labourers. It sounds
like science fiction, but all of these outcomes have been sought
by past generations. Even in Alberta we have only just settled the
court cases resulting from our own experiments in eugenics in the
last 70 years or so.
A third alarm has been sounded by environmentalists who are concerned
that manipulation both in the flora as well as the fauna could deplete
our genetic diversity. It is this diversity that drives evolution
and adaptation and that prevents species from disappearing altogether.
We have already seen in agriculture that depleting the number of
varieties of, say, corn carries the potential of all corn being seriously
harmed by a single type of blight. In ages nearly past, various strains
of corn might have survived the blight and lived to bloom another
day. The lack of diversity means we have to use more pesticides etc.
further damaging the environment. In green terms, diversity is good,
and the uniformity cloning could bring would be bad. The only problem
with this argument is imagining a time when human cloning could ever
be used enough to make uniformity a significant threat.
Fourth there are those who see cloning as “just another means
of keeping animals unjustly enslaved and subjected to pain for selfish
human purposes.” For example, before Dolly came several generations
of sheep with severe ailments. These opponents perceive the goal
of creating transgenic pigs for human organ transplant as cruel and
morally bankrupt. It is a strong argument that tugs at my conscience,
but to support it would require me to become a vegetarian immediately.
That might have worked when I lived in Vancouver, but in Alberta
I’m a lost cause with a mildly guilty conscience. Still, it
is one of the voices raised in protest.
And finally, we come back to Dolly the sheep. Healthy in all respects
save one. Her keepers recently observed a fact that has yet to gain
wide attention. Good old Dolly is literally good OLD Dolly. She was
cloned from a six year old (middle aged) sheep. Dolly’s cells
began life middle aged. She is three, but her cells have the characteristics
of a nine year old. Her keepers presently suspect she will only have
a half a normal lifespan. This little nugget reminds us of the law
of unintended consequences. Science, for all its gifts, is unable
to predict the unexpected side effects of their advances. We have
a generation or two to go before this technology might become safe
or useful. Proceeding cautiously seems the only sane course.
Well, each of us has to make our own decisions on this issue and
I don’t put forward my position as “right” or absolute,
but here goes:
In a health care system with more ability than money, animal cloning
offers a promise of lower cost transplant organs available when the
chances for successful surgeries are optimum. In addition, the possibility
of screening out genetic birth defects is attractive on a humane
and fiscal level. We don’t have to pay to heal diseases that
aren’t there, and if we can help a person avoid pain and suffering,
well that’s a good thing. And it seems more morally viable
to me to use genetic manipulation or cloning to create a healthy
fetus than it is to abort an unhealthy one. While I unequivocally
support a women’s right to choose, it would be better all around
if she never had to.
Of course we haven’t begun to consider the safeguards necessary
to make this all work, and to commit to use of this technology would
carry a promise of many missteps along the way. As one commentator
suggested, we are today in the matter of cloning about as far along
as the Wright Brothers were in the week after their first flight.
Cloning could bring genetic disaster... or not. We don’t really
know. And because it’s new and we don’t really know,
perhaps we exaggerate those potential costs because of our Yuk factor.
I don’t know. But as William James also suggested in the quote
I offered at the start of this sermon, new ideas become more acceptable
over time. Perhaps we should simply slow down, work with a moratorium,
or at least some limits on cloning for a few years until our thinkers,
activists and ethicists have had time to chew over the newness of
the ideas. And then proceed under careful regulation so that we can
see the long-term effects of our discoveries before we run the risk
of full production. This might chase out the venture capitalists,
but that is a risk with which I can live.
In the three years since Dolly’s birth, the shrillness of
the initial outrage has been tempered by reasoned debate and dialogue.
With a little more time cooler heads might prevail leaving us with
a direction that properly balances risks and benefits.
I leave the last word to Max Stackhouse, a United Church of Christ
minister and one of the foremost religious ethicists in North America:
The larger issue is, should humans have control over the totality
of their own destiny, and whether for religious, theological, or
moral reasons there should be limits... When you begin thinking about
what it means for humans, it seems a little like atomic research.
We cracked the atom, and now we’ve cracked the genetic code
in a certain way. And just as with the atom, this can create great
energy and promise, but also damage. I think that with the idea of
human cloning we do have the spiritual danger of playing God...
On the other hand, there is a need for humans to be responsible
stewards of the minds and hearts we have been given, and it is conceivable
that this kind of research could lead to better control of some genetic
illnesses, so it should be explored. But there are perils hovering
in the corners of even that suggestion. If we can manipulate something
for good, chances are we can also manipulate it for evil.
Like Stackhouse, I - and I think the majority - are uncertain. We
can’t get the genetic genie back into the bottle, nor do I
think we should try. But we can go slowly and carefully and thoughtfully,
until we can safely make the technology work for us and not against
us.
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