U.K. clone plan 'devalues life'

Ethicist: It's wrong to sacrifice one human life to benefit another

Bob Harvey
The Ottawa Citizen

Britain's decision to legalize the creation of cloned human embryos is a dangerous mistake that devalues human life, says a Canadian ethicist.

"We're not dealing just with a physical reality, but with some of our most important human values," said Margaret Somerville, director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law.

She said British scientists' plan to clone early human embryos to cure disease is wrong because it means destroying one life for the benefit of another.

British scientists said yesterday they hope to begin cloning human embryos within nine months.

The BioIndustry Association said that within three years, the technology could be tried out on patients suffering from Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, stroke, heart disease and other ailments.

Britain's House of Lords cleared the way for the experiments yesterday by giving final approval to a bill that will loosen restrictions on the use of spare embryos left over from in vitro fertilization, and allow its scientists to be the first in the world to clone human embryos.

New embryos are made up of stem cells that eventually evolve into different parts of the body.

They can be manipulated to become any desired cell. British scientists hope the technique could one day produce cures ranging from new skin for a patient in a burns unit, to healthy pancreatic cells that could produce insulin for a diabetic.

Ms. Somerville said British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken a situational ethics approach, and believes that such research is legitimate, because a greater good could result.

Fertility expert Lord Winston told his colleagues in the House of Lords that "There is no doubt that on your vote, my Lords, depends whether some people in the near future get the treatment which might save them from disease, or, even worse, death."

But Ms. Somerville says she and others believe that such research is inherently wrong, because it means transmitting human life only for the purpose of killing that life for the benefit of someone else.

"If you believe that, then it means you can't do it," she says.

Under the new British legislation, scientists will be able to apply to the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority for permission to remove the nuclei of donor eggs and replace them with the genetic material of diseased patients.

The egg would then be induced to divide and start growing into an embryo that would be genetically identical to the patient, instead of its donor. The cells of that embryo could then be transplanted back into the patient to replace diseased cells, without any fear of the rejection that normally accompanies transplants.

Suzanne Scorsone, a member of the Royal Commission on Reproductive Technology, said it is unnecessary for scientists to use embryos as a source of stem cells for such research.

"It is more difficult but still quite possible to get stem cells from various kinds of body tissues for therapeutic and research purposes, without destroying these very early human beings."

Ms. Scorsone, who is director of communications and family life for the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Toronto, said that "research that would help in the treatment of devastating disorders is of great importance. But it has to be done in ways that do not harm or bypass the dignity of human beings."

Meanwhile, Canada is one of the few industrialized countries, perhaps the only major one, that has no laws or regulations to cover the new genetic and reproductive technologies that science has made possible.

Any use of the new techniques is technically permitted in Canada, because nothing has been legally prohibited.

A voluntary moratorium on certain practices, such as commercial surrogate-mother deals, is being openly flouted. Canadian women are advertising their availability for gestational contracts on the Internet.

There is no sign of any attempt to enforce or even monitor compliance with the moratorium.

It is widely expected Health Minister Allan Rock will table legislation to address the new genetic and reproductive technologies in the coming parliamentary session, but his officials won't confirm it.

In its 1993 report, delivered after four years of study and consultations, the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies recommended the creation of a national agency to set standards and enforce regulations.

Since then, the government has continued to consult with the public and the provinces about the creation of such an agency. A bill was tabled in 1995, but died on the order paper before the 1997 federal election.

In that 1997 campaign, Mr. Rock promised a revised bill would be introduced. It never materialized.

Patricia Baird, who headed the royal commission, can't understand what has taken the government so long.

"For a nation like ours that's a developed country, that we don't have regulation in place to deal with these new dilemmas is amazing."

Ms. Baird fears a scandal or tragedy involving new techniques could lead to a backlash against important scientific work in the reproductive technology field.

"If you have absolutely no regulation at all, and it's totally laissez-faire, then decision- making is not a social process. It would be tragic if it took some real disasters for the government to take some leadership on this issue," Ms. Baird said.

Ms. Somerville said the procedure legalized in Britain is essentially the same technique as that used to create Dolly, a Scottish sheep that was the world's first successfully created clone.

She said that although Canada has no regulation to prevent such research, Canadian scientists have, by common agreement, abstained from creating human embryos.

The British Fertility Authority has been licensing research on leftover IVF embryos since 1991, but only for research on infertility, congenital disease, contraception and the screening of embryos for genetic defects.

Under the new British regulations, the creation of babies by cloning would still be outlawed, and embryos used in research would still have to be destroyed after 14 days. Stem cells start specializing at about 14 days to create bones, a nervous system and other parts of the body.