Garth RattrayMANY YEARS ago my father coined the phrase, "Things that seem far-fetched are only fetched from afar". Recently a 'religious movement' (the Raelian Movement) claimed that it had (through its company Clonaid) produced the first human clone, a seven-pound baby girl indelicately named 'Eve.' A Raelian 'bishop' and CEO of Clonaid, Biochemist Dr. Brigitte Boisselier, said that Eve was "created using DNA from the mother's skin cells and is a genetic twin of her mother, a 31-year-old American citizen."
A former French journalist named Claude Vorilhon founded the Raelian Movement in France in 1973. Vorilhon now calls himself Rael. The movement says that it has about 40,000 followers mostly in France, Japan and Canada. Rael claims to be a direct descendant of extraterrestrials (the Raelians) who created human life on Earth through genetic engineering. Things went from kooky to spooky because Vorilhon also said that the clone 'Eve' was only the first step toward his dream of human immortality. His ultimate goal is the production of adult clones through accelerated growth and the downloading of all the information from an individual's brain into the clone and thus "give humanity eternal life through cloning."
His plan for immortality precisely parallels the plot for the 2000 Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie The Sixth Day. Rael should note that the movie ended in absolute disaster for the mad businessman/scientist. The 1978 Gregory Peck/Laurence Olivier thriller movie, The Boys from Brazil, also highlighted the dark side of cloning. Even the make-belief movie world went to great pains to point out the folly behind such degenerate and blasphemous thinking.
Clones occur naturally in the form of identical twins. Scientists have been cloning plants for years but in 1938 a German scientist named Hans Spemann theorised that animals could be cloned. Frogs were first cloned (with partial success) in 1962 and mice attempted in 1981. Since then scientists have cloned sheep, goats, rabbits, cats, cattle, rhesus monkeys and even pigs (they possess the most compatible source of donor tissue for humans). There was even an experiment where a four-celled clone was produced from an infertile woman but it was terminated for ethical and legal reasons. In recent months Italian embryologist Dr. Severino Antinori has said several times that a woman was carrying a human clone due to be born in January 2003.
The process of cloning (put very simply) involves five steps.
Step 1: Enucleation. A mature (recipient) egg is chosen and the nucleus (which contains the genetic material) is sucked out and discarded.
Step 2: Transfer. A prepared (donor) skin cell is placed adjacent to the enucleated cell membrane.
Step 3: Fusion. A low electrical current is used to cause the membrane of the (donor) cell to fuse with the membrane of the enucleated (recipient) egg. When the two membranes fuse together, the recipient egg surrounds the nucleus of the skin cell (containing all the genetic material from the donor).
Step 4: Culture. During this stage the skin cell nucleus, already fused to the recipient egg, is put in a chemical bath and fooled into dividing as if it were the nucleus of a 1-cell stage embryo. It is then cultured in an incubator and divides just like a naturally fertilised egg.
Step 5: Transference. The developing embryo is implanted into the womb of a synchronised surrogate mother. The clone should go to full term.
As straight forward as it seems, there are so many spiritual, psychological, legal, social, ethical and moral issues at stake with human cloning that although the announcement of Eve's birth was viewed with great scepticism, the mere thought of a human clone/delayed twin was reprehensible and disgusting. It evoked universal condemnation and the leaders of the world's major religions, moralists, bio-ethicists, scientists and even politicians came out vehemently against it. The Vatican called it "brutal mentality." Scientists dubbed the situation "disturbing" and "objectionable". US President Bush found it "deeply troubling." But Clonaid CEO Brigitte Boisselier remains resolute and says, "Science cannot be stopped."
In his piece, "To Clone or not to Clone: The Ethical Question" April 7, 2000, Joseph Farnsworth outlines the pros and cons of cloning. The potential benefits include the possibility that, through cloning technology, we may study cell differentiation and learn how to grow new cells to replace damaged ones. He states a dubious 'benefit' as the use of clones for organ transplants. The technology may also provide a way for sterile couples to have 'offspring.'
The potential pitfalls are the loss of genetic variation i.e. no natural selection (an extremely serious problem for any species), the compromising of individualities, the possibility of black-market (possibly ill-gotten) foetuses for personal, selfish or financial use (including their use for spare body parts). The technology is imprecise and has a high failure rate. People may treat clones as second-class citizens (or sub-humans) with consequential serious psychosocial problems.
Art Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist reminds us that earlier attempts at cloning animals such as mice, pigs and sheep have led to a high rate of stillbirths or premature death. He also said that he worries that "We're going to create a lot of dead and sick children." Dolly the famous cloned sheep, has premature arthritis an unusual occurrence in sheep her age. As with other clones, it appears as if this unnatural process brings out or possibly produces genetic flaws.
If the Clonaid claim is fraudulent, they must stop clowning around with such a serious topic. If their claim is genuine, they must stop cloning around with such a sacrosanct matter. Even the strongest argument in support of cloning falls to pieces under scrutiny. An infertile couple that has an 'offspring' by cloning didn't fertilise anything because a clone (a DNA copy) of yourself would be your twin, not your offspring. In actual fact, the clone's genetic parents are your parents. We should pre-empt this unholy mess of cloning by writing laws to ban this unnatural, unethical and unkind process before technology overtakes morality.
Dr Garth A. Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice.
