An on-going debate has been heating up in the United Kingdom since the British government declared on 16th August that it will introduce legislation to amend a ban on human cloning, allowing scientific research on human embryos, and making Britain the first country to do so. The recommendations were put forward by the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Professor Liam Donaldson, and his advisory committee who have been studying the issue for almost a year. Professor Donaldson said, "The committee looked very carefully at the ethical issues, and decided that the potential benefits outweighed some of the concerns and would be justified by the potential benefits for future generations of patients." Parliament is set to vote on the issue this autumn and MPs from all parties can vote according to their personal beliefs on the subject rather than being forced to tow the party line.
The controversial issue in the debate that gives so much leverage to those against the new legislation lies in the fact that human stem cells can be taken from many sources other than the human embryo. Stem cells are capable of developing into almost any tissue in the body including bone, muscle, nerve and blood. If these cells can be directed in the lab to become selected types of tissue, they can be used to treat a host of degenerative diseases which at present are incurable. And producing the embryos through a cloning step similar to the one used to make Dolly will ensure that the transplant tissue suffered no rejection problems - it will be a perfect match for the patient.
Since human stem cells were isolated in a lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for the first time in 1998, advances in this field have become rapid. In June, scientists reported converting bone marrow cells into liver cells, offering hope that cells from adults can be made to regress and redirect themselves to form different types without the need to create an embryo. This will be the ultimate goal of research done on human embryonic stem cells, or so scientists say. However, it seems that scientists for the mere reason of simplicity wish to extract their stem cells from human embryos.
Stem cells may be extracted from several other sources as well as from the early human embryo. These include: germ cells or organs of an aborted fetus; blood cells of the umbilical cord at the time of birth; some adult tissues cells (such as bone marrow); and mature adult tissue cells reprogrammed to behave like stem cells. A report released from the Chief Medical Officer's expert group discusses this point: "These different types of stem cells are all unlikely to have the same properties or the same potential to develop into particular tissues. Theoretically, stem cells derived from early embryos have the greatest potential to develop into most types of tissue (they are often referred to as 'pluripotent'. Stem cells taken from fetal tissue or umbilical cord blood appear to be more limited in the type of tissue they can be developed into. Stem cells can be extracted from some adult tissues but their potential to develop into other kinds of tissue is also likely to be limited. It may in the future become possible to reprogram adult cells to behave like stem cells but at the moment this remains largely hypothetical and requires greater understanding of the mechanisms of reprogramming."
It is precisely these kinds of hypotheses, theories, appearances and likelihoods, in addition to the aim of it being a means to an end, that have enraged the pro-life and religious communities.
The Vatican released a report to the press on 25th August, stating that it was ethically immoral to produce and/or use living human embryos for the preparation of stem cells. This is based on the fact that "the living human embryo is - from the moment of the fusion of the gametes - a human being with a well defined identity. It follows from this that, as an 'individual human being,' the embryo has the right to his own life. Therefore any intervention, save those that favor that embryo, constitutes a violation of that right. Consequently, the ablation of the internal cell mass of the cytoplast, an act that seriously and irreparably damages the human embryo by interrupting its development, is a gravely immoral act and, consequently, is gravely illicit." The report continues to recite from the Encyclical Evangelium Vitae': "The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception, and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every, innocent human being to life." The report also goes on to say that it is morally unacceptable to carry out so-called 'therapeutic cloning' through the production of human embryos which are then destroyed for the production of stem cells because "the same ethical problem posed earlier arises again." According to the Vatican's report it is also ethically not right to use stem cells, and the differentiated cells obtained therefrom, when supplied by other researchers or available on the market because apart from sharing - explicitly or otherwise - in the morally illicit intention of the principal agent, close material cooperation also exists in the production and manipulation of human embryos by the producer or supplier. The declaration concludes [the possibility of using adult stem cells] "to reach the same goals it intended to reach with embryonic stem cells (even if many more stages must be gone through before seeing clear and definitive results) indicates this path as being the most reasonable and humane path to follow, in order to achieve authentic and valid progress in this new field of research, and promising therapeutic applications. Without doubt, this represents a great hope for a large number of suffering people."
The British pro-life organization Life states in one of the several releases on this issue to the press: "If we need stem cells for research purposes - not therapeutic ones - we can use any stem cells. Umbilical cords, for instance, are a very rich source, and there are plenty of those around. Using their cells poses no ethical or practical difficulties. So we do not need clones at all! We do not need to manufacture human beings by cell nucleus transfer in the laboratory and then kill them by harvesting their stem cells. Nor do we need to exploit 'surplus' embryos produced by IVF. We do not have to resort to this neo-cannibalism."
Even though British law has allowed human embryo research until the fourteenth day of conception (not including embryo cloning) legislation in the United States has not. At least not until last week when President Clinton announced new guidelines that will, for the first time, allow federal-funded scientists to conduct research on human embryo cells. The guidelines insist that federal research be conducted only on cells taken from frozen embryos that were destined to be discarded anyway. Moreover, federal money cannot be used for the destruction of embryos to extract the cells. That job has to be done by researchers who are funded privately and who can then pass the useful cells to federal supported scientists, creating a separation of responsibility for the embryo's destruction that opponents have criticized as morally meaningless. The new rule will not accept payments to embryo donors and will prohibit donors from specifying who should receive their embryo's stem cells. Those provisions aim to discourage the creation of a market in embryo cells and block any incentive for a woman to create fresh embryos just to provide potential treatment for a sick relative.
Although hailed by support groups such as the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation in New York for its 'extraordinary promise' to sufferers of some incurable diseases, anti-abortion groups in the US have accused the Clinton administration of deliberately releasing the new guidelines during congressional recess. Members of Congress vowed to pick up the issue when they returned. Rep Jay Dickey (R - Ark) commented saying, "We're talking about dismembering a living being, according to our interpretation," adding that he would consider filing a legislative amendment to clarify his position. Senator Sam Brownback from Kansas said, "It is never acceptable to deliberately kill one innocent human being in order to help another."
During its sixth conference in Jeddah in 1990, the Committee of the Convention for Islamic Law stated that it was prohibited to use human embryos for transplantation purposes unless the embryo was dead. If such transplantation was found to be possible (from a dead embryo) the process should not be subject to buying and selling. If a human embryo is left over from an IVF experiment it should be left as it is until it eventually dies without any form of intervention.
Will this on-going debate have any effect on the process already initiated by politicians in co-operation with over-zealous scientists? We will have to wait and see.
