Cloning news ignites ethical debate

Human embryos cloned in South Korea

This time, it appears to be for real.

News on Thursday that South Korean researchers had successfully cloned human embryos was taken seriously by both opponents and proponents of cloning.

That didn’t happen last year, when a company called Clonaid claimed to have a cloned baby. Clonaid is funded by a French-based religious sect that believes humans were created by aliens.

In Thursday’s online edition of the journal Science, South Korean scientists described the unprecedented production of scores of cloned human embryos, each a genetic replica of an adult woman. The goal was to retrieve from those embryos stem cells, which scientists believe have the capacity to regenerate failing organs. And from one of those embryos, they did so.

“I think it really probably has been well-done,” said Joan Hunt, senior associate dean for research at the Kansas University Medical Center. “The results are perfectly reproducible and solid.”

The news also renewed debate on the ethics and potential benefits of cloning. Proponents noted the potential for curing diseases. Opponents said the embryos were living beings that shouldn’t be killed.

“We haven’t wrestled with it yet — with what is it legally,” said U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. “Is it a person or a piece of property?”

Brownback introduced a bill in 2001 that would ban all human cloning. He said Thursday he expected the legislation to come to a vote in the coming weeks.

But scientists make a sharp distinction between cloning for reproductive purposes and what is called “therapeutic cloning,” which could someday allow patients to grow their own replacement tissue — and which some researchers say could help cure everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.

Mary Faith Marshall, a bioethicist at the KU Medical Center, said she couldn’t imagine U.S. scientists being interested in cloning for reproductive purposes. She noted that national organizations such as the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology already have a voluntary moratorium on reproductive cloning.

“The legitimate scientific community isn’t interested in that,” she said.

Rather, Marshall said, she’s convinced using embryonic stem cells, which can be turned into any body tissue, could have huge scientific gains.

“From the perspective of being able to advance therapies and understanding diseases like cancer, this is really exciting news,” she said.

But Brownback and others say stem cells found in adult bone marrow and in umbilical fluids already have proven they have adequate potential to meet medical needs.

“As far as a scientific or medical use, there is precious little evidence embryonic stem cells would ever be able to treat a patient,” said David Prentice, a Kansas University graduate and professor at Indiana State University who is a scientific adviser to Brownback.

During a news teleconference Thursday, Brownback asserted that the cloning debate was “not an abortion issue,” but also noted that the embryos used in South Korea had been grown as old or older than those that would be implanted in the womb.

Asked if he would support a ban on reproductive cloning but not therapeutic cloning, he said the reproductive ban couldn’t be enforced.

“You’re going to see these get implanted, and then what do you do?” he said. “You’re not going to demand that the child be aborted. It really isn’t enforced.”


Washington Post contributed to this story.