Announcement reignites ethical debate on human cloning
The announcement that South Korean researchers successfully created a cloned human embryo hit the scientific world like a lighting bolt this week, invigorating the static debate over the ethics of creating life in the lab.
Human cloning, long dismissed as the province of fringe scientists and even some religious cult members in uniforms befitting a "Star Trek" episode, has entered the realm of verifiable science, accomplished at a major university and published in one of the world's leading journals. The South Koreans performed their experiment to help cure disease, but it was lost on no one that the same technology also could be used to create a cloned baby.
"The age of human cloning has apparently arrived," warned the chairman of President Bush's Council on Bioethics, Dr. Leon R. Kass, after hearing of the South Koreans' experiment. He called for a comprehensive ban on all cloning experiments like the one carried out by Woo Suk Hwang's team in Seoul.
But the coming pitched battle between anticloning conservatives and researchers who see the potential for a medical revolution in cloned stem cells may produce a standoff that both sides say they are trying to avoid: Cloning a human baby could remain legal in the United States.
The South Korean Parliament, while strongly supporting cloning for research, has banned reproductive cloning. Hwang yesterday called on governments worldwide to follow South Korea's lead.
No such ban has been passed in the United States, in large measure because opponents want a broader ban that would stop the creation of even the speck-sized embryos used for the South Koreans' research. The US House of Representatives has twice passed such a sweeping ban, but the Senate has balked.
A similar standoff has taken place in other venues -- from the United Nations, which has not adopted rules against reproductive cloning, to states such as New Jersey, which this winter passed a ban on cloning children. Advocates for patients with medical conditions ranging from spinal cord injuries to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases have rallied in support of so-called therapeutic cloning, where cloned cells are allowed to grow until they are large enough to harvest stem cells -- highly flexible cells that can mature into any tissue in the body. Ultimately, these stem cells could be used to grow customized replacement tissues for people with degenerative diseases.
US Senate colleagues Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, are pushing a bill that would ban the creation of cloned children, while allowing cloning experiments to proceed for research only.
But opponents say that even the earliest stages of reproduction, including the 100-cell blastocysts created by the South Koreans, produce human life, and that the research, which kills the embryo to harvest the cells, should be stopped. "Human cloning is wrong," said Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Colorado, who opposes cloning for stem cells. "It treats the youngest of humans as mere property, and it should be banned."
Claims of human cloning have been made before. In December 2002, leaders of a religious cult called the Raelians captured the world's attention when they said they had created the world's first cloned baby, a contention that later was deemed false. The Raelians also claim to be in touch with intelligent alien life forms.
Although the South Koreans' cloning procedure was technically difficult, most scientists said that with practice, a top lab that works in this field would be able to replicate it, and that the new procedure would make it easier for someone less reputable to create a cloned human baby.
Some say the South Koreans' report, published online yesterday in the journal Science, is tantamount to a recipe for cloning humans. But Science editor Donald Kennedy said Hwang's research is only a bare outline. "It is a recipe only in the sense that `catch a turtle' is the recipe for turtle soup," he said at a news conference in Seattle yesterday.
It is not known whether it would be easy to grow tiny cloned blastocysts to full-term fetuses. Fertility clinics have been able to grow ordinary blastocysts into successful pregnancies in 50 percent to 60 percent of cases, but cloned blastocysts have succeeded in only 1 percent to 8 percent of animal tests, said Rudolf Jaenisch, a leading cloning specialist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Such odds have not stopped the attempts of Dr. Panayiotis Zavos, a fertility specialist based in Kentucky who has been heavily criticized by other researchers. He said that the South Koreans' announcement proves it is just a matter of time before the first human baby is cloned, and that he is working to make the procedure safe. He said that he has an ongoing commitment to bring a cloned baby into the world but acknowledges that such a baby could suffer grave medical problems.
"It is like going to the moon," Zavos said. "We didn't know that we could bring [astronaut Neil] Armstrong back."
The fact that Zavos and others like him now have a better chance than ever of cloning a human child may not be enough to bring the two sides in the cloning debate together. Yesterday, Cardinal William Keeler, chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, called the South Koreans' research "a sign of moral regress" and called for a total ban on the research.
But Kennedy said the South Koreans' research underscores the need for a ban on cloning children, while "enabling responsible and lifesaving stem cell research to proceed under strict ethical guidelines."
Scott Allen can be reached at allen@globe.com. Gareth Cook can be reached at cook@globe.com. 