Putting embryos on the assembly line

UNESCO Courier, April, 2001 by Amy Otchet

By creating embryos through cloning, we may also find a treasure trove for treating disease. But in the rush to profit, we may sell short the very stuff that makes us human, a sense of dignity.

A theoretical speck in a Petri dish has a veritable mob straining for a better view across the industrialized world and beyond: men and women in white coats and religious robes jostle beside parliamentary lords, scruffy environmentalists and patients trembling with Parkinson's disease. The mystery in question is none other than the human embryo cloned La Dolly. The aim is not to produce people. Through "therapeutic" cloning, scientists would create embryos to harvest stem cells, which may hold the key to treating a wide range of disease. But like most passionate debates, the real issue-commercialization--sits quietly in the background of the emotional din.

Human respect or cellular sludge?

The debate erupted across the industrially advanced world on January 22nd, when Britain became the first European country to legalize the creation of cloned human embryos. Members of the European Parliament almost immediately expressed their shock and condemned the decision. Yet in many ways, the new law is a logical extension of rules dating back over a decade. Since 1990, UK researchers could create and use embryos for limited research purposes, namely to treat infertility and detect birth defects. The new law widens the field of study to include stem cells, which experts say could revolutionize medicine, offering the possibility of transplants to treat scores of illnesses from Parkinson's disease to diabetes (see box). No one has yet applied for a license to perform such experiments, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which will carefully screen each request. No other uses of cloning would be allowed and a new law has been promised to explicitly ban reproductive cloning.

As expected, the most rigid opposition has come from the Catholic Church, which considers the embryo to be a living person from the moment of conception. Cloning aside, even research involving "spare" embryos (created for infertility treatments but not used) is condemned because it is morally wrong to use a person for the benefit of someone else.

At the opposite end of the spectrum lie the hardcore utilitarians of science and business, who are generally astute enough not to announce their politically incorrect views: namely that the embryo is just another batch of cellular sludge that can and should be used like any other biological resource in the pursuit of medical research.

Somewhere between these two poles lies the famous middle ground, for which there is no clear road map but a general principle: respect for human dignity, a touchstone of French and European law. "The very fact of being human automatically entails the right to a certain respect or dignity. It is what separates us from other animals," says Noelle Lenoir, president of the European Group on Ethics and justice on the French Constitutional Court. The seeds of this notion rest in the major monotheistic religions, says Lenoir, but the principle effectively took root in international law following the Second World War and the eugenic brutality of the Nazis.

Finding biological clues

The embryo is not legally considered a person but rather "a human being in the true sense of the word, meaning it exists and its nature is human," according to Bernard Mathieu, a French professor at the Sorbonne. This protects the embryo from being reduced to a commercial resource without intruding upon a woman's right to protect her health and control her fertility. Such an understanding of human dignity underlies the decision by many European countries to strictly limit or prohibit embryo research in general.

But the UK's green light to therapeutic cloning reflects a very different interpretation of the same principle, according to Alastair Campbell, a professor and member of the UK expert committee which recommended that Parliament approve the research. The traditional categories of vocabulary for distinguishing between respect for human life and that of persons are too clumsy, says Campbell. Instead, he turns to biology for clues in defining ethical limits. Basically, the embryo is treated with increasing moral seriousness or protection as it develops. This is why it is forbidden to experiment on any embryo--cloned or not--after 14 days, when the "primitive streak" or the first signs of an emerging nervous system appear.

A lurking trade in stem cells

Dr Donald Bruce of the Church of Scotland reluctantly agrees that certain forms of research may be justified on "spare" embryos. However, the recent UK decision crosses a major ethical threshold, says the director of the Church's Society, Religion and Technology Project. "Instead of treating embryos as a whole," says Bruce, "we now see them as a source of parts." The UK has moved from a policy of "no and less"--which only permits the use of embryos when there are no alternatives for understanding very serious problems--to a "yes, provided" approach--which opens the floodgates provided that certain conditions are met.