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November 2008: The Big Chill: Cloning the Dead?
Now that scientists have learned to use cloning technology to produce living baby mice from dead frozen mice, could such research be attempted on humans one day? Only half joking, University of Pennsylvania scientist John Gearhart said that it might be possible to bring back Boston Red Sox hitter Ted Williams whose body was frozen after dying in 2002. The mouse study might “now stimulate the small industry of freezing parts of us before we die…,” he added.
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What’s wrong with patenting human genes?
In February 2007 Congressman Xavier Beccera co-sponsored legislation to end the practice of patenting human genes: the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act (H. R. 977). Why? In 1990 the Human Genome Project led to the discovery of approximately 35,000 genes. Since then, twenty percent of these genes have been patented and, as Congressman Becerra underscores, “we have absolutely no say in what those patent holders do with our genes.”
Here are a few of the Congressman’s concerns |
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Last month, independent research teams from Japan and the University of Wisconsin announced that they had successfully reprogrammed adult skin cells to function as embryonic stem cells (ESCs.) This means that researchers need not engage in cloning for the purpose of deriving ESCs; and, importantly, there’s even less good reason to subject women to the health risks of ovarian hyperstimulation to extract the eggs needed to do the cloning.
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AHB NOTE:
The recent success of Oregon researchers in cloning monkey embryos and from them culling stem cells increases urgency for clear thinking about everything that primate cloning implies. Lead investigator, Shoukrat Mitalipov, reports that he is “quite sure it will work in humans” and enthusiasts quickly jump to the elusive promise of cures to justify this research agenda. Less well appreciated is the specter of a new eugenics. Consider, for example, Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s recent book, The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.
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AHB NOTE:
Just when you thought that commodifying human biology couldn't get any closer to being all about the "bottom line," here comes the creation and sale of for-profit, made-to-order embryos. What's next -- auctioning "Grade A select" embryos on E-Bay? Saletan's comment suggests how the acceptance of made-to-order babies takes us further down the road of consumer-driven eugenics.
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AHB NOTE:
While France, Germany, and Canada are among the nations banning production of chimeras and other human-animal embryo mixtures, Great Britain, Belgium, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore permit some or all of these procedures. Animal-human hybrid embryonic stem cell (ESC) research is already underway in the United States. What are the unexamined implications of this research? Why is there less public awareness about genetically modified human and animal species than about genetically modified plants and crops?
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AHB NOTE:
This 2005 essay by Jaime Shreeve is worth revisiting because of the way it presents clearly some of the motivations for and social and ethical pitfalls of conducting research that combines human and animal genetic material. Such clear consideration is particularly helpful given that Great Britain recently approved the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos. In the U.S. similar resesarch proceeds, largely without regulation. Technologies developed to create human-animal hybrids (chimera) as well as the creations themselves are patentable. Shreeve begins by describing experiments done on a species of monkey found in abundance on the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts. Human brain cells are injected into the brains of the monkeys who are not given names but are assigned numbers and are referred to not as animals but as "animal models." Shreeve goes on to relate developments in chimeric research that are "more ''unnatural'' -- and thus more troubling" than the experiments on St. Kitts. In the two years since the publication of this NY Times Magazine essay, some bioethicists have worked to normalize human-animal hybrid research. Will reportage following Great Britain's decision to allow creation of human-animal hybrid embryos make the concern of Shreeve's piece seem quaint?
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AHB NOTE:
This Nov/Dec 2000 Stanford Magazine article put a human face on the motivations for egg donation and some of the hazards: risks to women's health, human commodification, techno-eugenics, conflicts of interest. This discussion characterizies donation in the infertility industry context. Many of the same issues, however, are magnified in the research cloning context where there is mounting pressure, globally, to obtain the "raw material" for cloning: women's eggs.
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