Criticism of cloning mounts

National Catholic Reporter, Jan 23, 1998

A researcher's plans to attempt human cloning were criticizes as crass commercialism and premature scientific experimentation.

Chicago scientist Richard Seed announced Jan. 6 that he has four couples lined up to participate in his attempts to produce a human baby by cloning. Scientists would replace the DNA in a human egg with that of another person whose DNA was used. The technique was used by Scottish scientists in 1996 to produce a sheep named Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal.

Moral theologian John Haas, president of the Pope John Center for the Study of Ethics in Health Care, said calling Seed a scientist is generous.

"He's an entrepreneur who wants to make money from exploiting people who arent' able to have children," Haas said. "It's part of the trend toward commercialization everything, including human life."

Cynthia Crysdale, an associate professor who teaches ethics at The Catholic University of America said Seed "wants to be the Bill Gates of cloning technology"

In a statement released by the university, she asked, "Why is he not willing to wait to see how cloning will affect Dolly over her lifetime, to take the time to study how this technology will affect human persons?"

From the perspective of scientific progress alone, LeRoy Walters, director of Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics, said Seed's goal of cloning a human being by 1999 "is just so premature as to be an outrageous proposal."

Walters noted that the Scottish researchers made 277 attempts before Dolly was produced. He said that worldwide probably fewer than 25 mammals have been successfully cloned. "The idea of moving from there into human reproductive technology, I find incredible," Walters said.

Among the unknowns of cloning that should be resolved before experimentation begins on humans are the long-term effects on genes and chromosomes, Walters said.

A statement from the Christian Medical and Dental Society noted that experimenting with human cloning risks deaths and lethal birth defects. "We all sympathize with infertile couples, but is it worth paying the price in human lives and suffering to come up with an experimental baby?" asked Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the organization.

Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and director of the Bioethics Institute at Rome's Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, said human cloning "represents a dominion by man over man and includes a kind of desire to replace God's plans in an arbitrary and complete way, creating man in man's image and likeness,"

Sgreccia said the condemnations by the Catholic church, other religions and ethicists is not enough; "the law must intervene."

President Bill Clinton already has banned federal funding of human cloning experiments, and a national bioethics commission has recommended that Congress pass legislation banning the experiments.