Ethics of Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research

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Ethics of Human Cloning and Stem Cell Research

• Dr. Pattle Pun,
• Dept. of Biology, Wheaton College,
• Wheaton, IL 60187
• Pattle.p.pun_at_wheaton.edu

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From Clone to Man
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Technology of cloning
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Technique similar to Intra-Cytoplasmic Sperm
Injection (ICSI)
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Mammalian (Non-human)Reproductive Cloning WHY?

• Accomplish animal husbandry goals
• Produce genetically identical animal strains
• Replicate elite farm livestock
• Animal conservation
• To produce transgenic livestock
• Pharming
• Xenotransplantation
• Disease-resistant livestock

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Mammalian (Non-human) Reprod. Cloning SUCCESSES

• Live births reported using adult donor nuclei in
  at least eight mammals

• Goats
• Cats
• Rabbits
• Gaur (Asian ox)

• Sheep
• Mice
• Cows
• Pigs

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Mammalian (Non-human) Reprod. Cloning SUCCESSES

• Cleaving embryos (but not live births) reported
  in several other species using donor nuclei from
  fetal or adult cells
• Dogs
• Rats
• Horses
• Monkeys

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Mammalian (Non-human) Reprod. Cloning SUCCESSES

• Several different transgenic mammals have been
  generated using cloning technique
• Sheep
• Mice
• Cows
• Pigs
• Goats
• Rabbitsnone have been liveborn yet

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Polly and her sisters secrete human factor IX
in their milka drug needed by hemophiliacs
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Targeted disruption of a key gene causing tissue
rejection A step closer to xenotransplants?
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Developments in Human Cloning

• Abnormal human embryos cloned by embryo
  splittingHall Stillman, 1993
• Establishment of human ES cell lines first
  reported in 1998 from
• BlastocystsThomson et al.
• Germinal tissues of fetusesShamblott, et al.

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Developments in Human Cloning

• Several groups are trying to isolate ES cells
  from cloned human embryos
• Advanced Cell TechnologyCibelli et al., 2001.
• Roger Pedersenformerly of UCSF
• Lu Guangxiu (China)isolated ES cells from human
  blastocysts?
• Several groups are reportedly trying to produce
  children from adult nuclear donors

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Dr. Severino Antinori and Dr. Panos Zavos
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Dr. Brigitte Boisselier with Rael
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• A human clone has no genetic contribution from
  the mother. If an infertile couple uses human
  cloning to obtain offspring, they will use the
  nucleus of the somatic cells of the husband for
  implantation into the enucleated egg of the
  mother. The resulting clone will always be a male
  who possesses only the characteristics of the
  father

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• In 2001, a few fertility researchers in the
  United States and in Italy have begun
  experimenting on human cloning. Many infertile
  couples have already volunteered their sex cells
  for these experiments. These scientists claim
  that they will have successful results in two
  years and predicted that the expenses of human
  cloning will be comparable to artificial
  insemination.

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• When the somatic cells from an adult individual
  are cultivated in the laboratory, they will only
  divide and develop into the same kind of somatic
  cells. However, when stem cells derived from
  human embryo are established as cell lines that
  can perpetually divide in the laboratory, they
  can develop into various kinds of human tissues.

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• These totipotent characteristics of the human
  stem cells are most promising for medical
  research since these cells can be exploited to
  become potential sources of human transplants to
  replace damaged tissues in many incurable
  diseases.

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Technology of Stem Cell Research
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• Potential benefits of human cloning and stem cell
  research

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• One in 6 couples in developed countries on the
  average is infertile due to genetic or
  environmental causes. Artificial insemination and
  human cloning are amongst the techniques that can
  help these infertile couples to conceive and
  fulfill their desires for procreation.

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• In an animal study, Dr. McKay and his
  colleagues Lorenz Studer, M.D., and Viviane
  Tabar, M.D., took neural stem cells from the
  brains of rat embryos and grew them in culture
  dishes with a protein called basic fibroblast
  growth factor that helps the cells survive and
  divide. After the cells multiplied for 6 to 8
  days, the growth factor was removed and the cells
  were allowed to aggregate into free-floating
  spheres of neurons. The neurons in the spheres
  began to develop functioning connections with
  each other, producing dopamine as well as several
  other kinds of neurotransmitters. When the
  spheres were injected into the brains of rats
  that were missing the dopamine-producing region
  on one side of their brains, the rats
  Parkinsonian symptoms gradually diminished. Most
  showed about a 75 percent improvement in motor
  function 80 days after they received the
  transplants.
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• Stem cells can be one of the sources for human
  transplants. For example, scientists have
  successfully cultivated nerve cells that secret
  dopamine, a neurotransmitter, from embryonic stem
  cells. These cells are transplanted into the
  bodies of patients suffering from Parkinsons
  disease in whom the defective nervous system
  lacks dopamine. Their bodies then acquired the
  ability to secret dopamine and they are cured.
  Despite opposing results and side effects that
  are yet to be totally understood and controlled,
  embryonic stem cells seem to also pose promises
  for other incurable diseases such as diabetes.

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• Medical and Ethical Challenges

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• There are web sites offering human sex cells for
  sale. Sperms of Nobel laureates and eggs of
  beautiful models or female students of
  prestigious institutions of higher learning are
  collected and sold to the highest bidders

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• Molecular biologist Professor Lee Silver of
  Princeton University predicted that the 21st
  century will divide human societies into two
  groups according the cloning technology
• The GeneRich
• those who are able and/or willing to clone
  themselves,
• The Naturals
• those that are unable and/or unwilling to
  clone themselves

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• A brave new world envisioned by the eugenic
  movement will become a reality. Unscrupulous
  entrepreneurs and aggressive politicians will use
  reproductive technologies such as human cloning
  and genetic manipulation to control human
  populations and monopolize market economy. The
  net effect may be the polarization of the rich
  and the poor, the haves and the have-nots.
  Totalitarian regimes can exploit the eugenic
  movement to eliminate the unfit of human
  societies!

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• Are human clones really human?

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• When Dolly was born, she was not an infant sheep
  since she carries the genetic material of the
  nuclear donor. Adult body cells are known to
  gradually lose their telomers (the end sequences
  in the linear chromosomes of most eukaryotic
  cells) because of the lack of telomerase, an
  enzyme found in tumor or embryonic cells which
  can lengthen the telomers during cell division.

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• As a result, the life expectancy of Dolly is
  shorter than a newborn sheep. In addition, Dolly
  has obesity problem. At 6, she was given a lethal
  injection after veterinarians discovered she had
  lung cancer. Normal life span of sheep is 12
  years. These symptoms that are associated
  with premature aging are also
• found in other cloned
• animals.

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Wilmut listed defects occurring regularly in
other cloned animals, including gigantism
(excessive size) in cloned sheep and cattle
placentas of up to four times the normal size in
mice and heart defects in pigs. Despite being
given normal amounts of food, many cloned mice
also become grotesquely fat, while many cloned
cows, sheep and pigs have developmental
difficulties, lung problems and malfunctioning
immune systems. Cloned animals have also shown
a variety of individual defects. A calf cloned in
France appeared to be thriving but suddenly died
at 51 days old after a failure in its ability to
produce white blood cells. Similarly, scientists
at Roslin had to put down a cloned lamb at 12
days old because the muscles around its lungs
were so abnormally thick that it could hardly
breathe.
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• Moreover, the success rate of cloned animals is
  extremely low. Dolly was born after 277
  unsuccessful trials. It will be a horrendous
  waste of human embryos if similar experiments are
  carried out in the attempts to clone humans when
  more than 99 of them are destroyed.

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• Human clones are not only facing health problems,
  they are also faced with psychological pressures.
  He/She always lives under the shadow of his/her
  nuclear donors and will not have the normal self
  image developed in the traditional nuclear family
  with biological parents.

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• Embryonic stems cells can be developed from
  discarded fertilized eggs in fertility clinics,
  aborted or miscarried fetuses. Whenever a human
  fetus is cultivated in the laboratory to develop
  into stem cells, it is no longer viable as a
  human fetus. In other words, the embryo is
  destroyed.

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• In what stage of embryonic development is the
  fertilized egg accorded the status of a human
  being who is entitled to human right protection?

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• In the context of human transplants, should we
  sacrifice one life in order to save another life?

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• In fact, recent successes with adult stem cells
  make them a non-controversial and promising
  alternative to embryonic stem cells. These
  rapidly dividing adult cells, such as cells
  derived from bone marrow, placenta, cord blood,
  are also capable of developing into totipotent
  cells. They can also pose promises as potential
  source of human transplants.

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Promises of Adult Stem Cell Research
Cells isolated from murine skeletal muscle have a
remarkable capacity for hematopoietic
differentiation
Hematopoietic potential of stem cells isolated
from murine skeletal muscle Kathyjo Ann Jackson,
Tiejuan Mi, and Margaret A. Goode Proc Natl Acad
Sci U S A. 1999 December 7 96(25) 1448214486 -
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Embryonic Stem Cells, Cloning, Are Not
Necessarily Path To Cure

• 1. Embryonic stem cells have produced
  disappointing results for juvenile diabetes
• Because of the difficulty of getting ESCs to
  differentiate into desired tissues, the risk of
  tumor formation, the genetic instability of ESCs
  in culture, and other problems, ESCs cannot be
  expected to provide treatments for juvenile
  diabetes anytime soon.
• S. Sipione et al., Insulin expressing
  cells from differentiated embryonic stem cells
  are not beta cells, 47 Diabetologia 499-508
  (2004).

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Embryonic Stem Cells, Cloning, Are Not
Necessarily Path To Cure

• 2. ADULT islet cells have reversed juvenile
  diabetes in hundreds of patients in clinical
  trial
• of the 250 patients who have received the
  newest version of the transplant, more than 80
  percent have been free from insulin shots or
  insulin pumps for more than a year .
• D. Wahlberg, New islet cells put into
  liver, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, June
  1, 2003, at www.ajc.com/health/content/health/spec
  ial/0603/01exdiabetic_sidebar.html.

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Embryonic Stem Cells, Cloning, Are Not
Necessarily Path To Cure

• 3. Problems of supply and tissue rejection in the
  Edmonton protocol are being addressed.
• NIH researchers have shown that a prior
  transplant of adult bone marrow stem cells can
  prevent rejection of islet cell transplants in
  mice, without use of anti-rejection drugs
• News Release, American Society of
  Hematology, Researchers Look to Stem Cell
  Therapy and Bone Marrow Transplants to Find a
  Cure for Diabetes, December 8, 2003, at
  www.hematology.org/news/press/press_120903_5.cfm?p
  agemodeprint

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Embryonic Stem Cells, Cloning, Are Not
Necessarily Path To Cure

• 4. ADULT stem cells are advancing to create
  entirely new therapies for juvenile diabetes.
• Researchers in Canada have shown that
  transplanted adult stem cells from bone marrow
  can cause pancreatic tissue to repair itself,
  restoring normal insulin production and reversing
  symptoms of diabetes. 
• Transplanted Bone Marrow Stem Cells
  Reverse Diabetes in Mice, JDRF Countdown, Fall
  2003, p. 6. See D. Hess et al., Bone
  marrow-derived stem cells initiate pancreatic
  regeneration, 21 Nature Biotechnology 763-70
  (2003).

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Embryonic Stem Cells, Cloning, Are Not
Necessarily Path To Cure

• 5. Therapeutic Cloning is Useless in Treating
  Juvenile Diabetes
• autoimmune diseases, including type 1
  diabetes.  In such cases transfer of
  immunologically identical cells to a patient is
  expected to induce the same rejection .
• I. Wilmut, Human cells from cloned
  embryos in research and therapy, 328 British
  Medical Journal 415-6 (2004)

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• The United States House of Representatives have
  voted to ban research on human cloning
• The President of the United States has also
  recently decided that federal support will not be
  available to support any research based on
  embryonic stem cells created after August 9,
  2001.

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• Guidelines according to Ethical Principles
• (J. F. Kilner)

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(1) Principle of Utility

• 1. Unjust allocation of limited medical resources
• 2. Genetically engineering people (without their
  consent) only for the benefit of others.

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(2) Principle of Autonomy

• 1. Great Risk to the Clones life.
• 2. Conflict with the Autonomy of the Clones.

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(3) Principle of Human Dignity, Being Human per
se

• 1. Comprehensiveness Applies to All humans?
• 2. Consistency Things of Value?
• 3. Credibility Reducible to one or more
  characteristics?

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• Guidelines according to the Scriptures

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• After the first human couple sinned, the human
  race has been subject to death, disease and pain
  (Gen. 3). The paradox of a loving Creator
  allowing human suffering is only resolved in the
  Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection of our
  Lord Jesus Christ.

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• (A) The purpose of human life is for the glory
  of God. God created us for His glory.(Is. 437).

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• While eliminating human suffering is a noble
  cause, there may be a higher purpose for some
  incurable diseases after all human efforts are
  exhausted, as Paul has experienced from the thorn
  in his flesh. (II Cor. 127-9) Jesus did not
  confront the origins of congenital diseases. Yet
  He made it clear that the ultimate purpose of the
  healing of the man blind from birth was that the
  works of God might be displayed in him (Jn.
  93).

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• Infertile couples should not pursue human cloning
  that risks the destruction of potential lives or
  creating defective human embryos in their
  attempts to have biological offspring. This is
  exactly the reason used by the mainstream
  scientific establishment to oppose
  experimentation on human cloning. Infertile
  couples should explore other avenues of having
  children such as adoption of unwanted children.

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• (B) Human Being, Created in the Image of God,
  Became a Living Being by the Direct Involvement
  of God.

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• Humans were created in the Image of God. (Gen. 1
  26-27). Gods act of the breathing into the
  nostrils of man the breath of life to make him a
  living being (Gen. 27) strongly suggests a
  direct involvement of God in mans life. After
  the creation of the first couple, the capability
  for procreation or the potentials of the human
  gene pool that generated the entire human race is
  also divinely endowed. (Gen. 128, 2 24).

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• The Scriptures emphasize children are the
  inheritance given by God (Ps. 1273). Invitro
  fertilization using the sex cells of an infertile
  couple and implantation of these artificially
  inseminated embryos into the wifes uterus has
  been successfully carried out. These children can
  be a gift of God made possible by good
  stewardship on the parts of scientists who
  develop these technologies.

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• However, if the sole purpose of artificial
  insemination is to create human embryos for
  experiments in human cloning, then the line of
  violation of human rights may have been crossed.
  Human clones are products of asexual reproduction
  which lacks the normal process of genetic
  recombination during meiosis characteristic of
  sexual reproduction that gives rise to variations
  amongst the offspring of a couple. In addition,
  human clones will have shorter life spans. Even
  though the technology of human cloning can be
  improved, the human clones will live in the
  perpetuate shadow of identity crisis. They will
  always be second-class citizens. Humans are
  always an end in themselves, never a means.
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Conclusion

• Establishment of Scriptural principles that will
  safeguard human dignity and prevent abuse of
  human rights for reproductive technologies.

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http//www.bioethics.gov/