William Campbell Blog#11

Blog#11-Campbell

To clone or not to clone? That was the question. Then along came Dolly the sheep in 1997, when researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland announced that they had literally made a ewe turn from the cells of a donor sheep. Per usual, genetic research past and present runs well ahead of scientific journal and press announcements, and when Dolly came to be, some scientists were prepared to answer “yes” as to whether humans could be cloned. The news of Dolly flamed the fires of the long standing debate between scientists and ethicists, and, now, with the human genome fully mapped, the meaning of what it is to be human has taken on a more involved significance. Nancy Gibbs, senior editor at Time, writes, “Our fierce national debate over issues like abortion and euthanasia will seem tame and transparent compared with the questions that human cloning raises.”(216)
Those against human cloning point to eliminating the random mixing of genes during normal reproduction. This could reduce human genetic diversity and even halt human evolution, irrevocably changing the human race. “It is the serendipitous mixing of genes that produces the Einsteins and the Mozarts of the world…”(Gibbs 216) Others feel that the “humanness” of man will be lost with cloning. “It’s not the personal challenge that will disappear. It’s the personal,” writes Bill McKibben of Middlebury College.(239) It appears that most opponents find the idea of “playing God” with reference to genetic manipulation distasteful and even frightening.
Those in favor of human cloning and genetic manipulation feel the quality of the human condition could be improved if genetic and reproductive technologies advanced. Some feel we could and should seize control of our evolutionary future. These proponents point to the past argument about in vitro fertilization (IVF) which is now broadly accepted as a legitimate method of conception. And, it is often noted that identical twins share identical genetic material and are actually natural clones, and certainly are not to be feared. Gregory Stock, the director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at the University of California School of Medicine, LA, writes of advancing genetic technologies, “Our collective challenge is not to figure out how to block these developments, but to best realize their benefits while minimizing our risks and safeguarding our rights and freedoms.”(232)
There exist certain hard realities with regard to these issues. A TIME/CNN poll found that 90 percent of the respondents were opposed to cloning humans.(Gibbs 216) The statistics of animal clonings to date show only a two percent success rate and a 98 percent morbidity rate at the implant, gestation, and birth stages.(Gibbs 218) Also, three years after Dolly the sheep was cloned, researchers found that her cells seemed to be aging faster than normal. This observation has been sometimes borne out with other cloned animals, too. It seems there are still inherent mechanical problems, as well as the moral and ethical ones, to overcome before human cloning becomes a reality. To clone or not to clone humans? This is now the question, and the answers of “if” or “when” have yet to be decided.


Works Cited

Nancy Gibbs, “Baby, It’s You and You and You.” TIME, February 12, 2001.

Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, by Bill McKibben, Henry Holt and Company, 2003.

Gregory Stock, “The Last Human.” From Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future, by Gregory Stock, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002.