Sacred body? Stem cell research and human cloning

Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2002 by Heinrich Bedford-Strohm

In the other continents of the world, the situation is hard to classify. In many countries there is no legal rule in this issue at all. In Australia, Israel and the United States, liberal legal standards allow intensive research with embryonic stem cells. The limitation of stem cell research which the American President George Bush advocates and which is presently being debated in the United States only applies to public funding. Research possibilities by privately financed institutions remain untouched. The political process concerning rules on human cloning is still open. The house of representatives has banned all forms of human cloning, while the leading proposal in the senate would allow therapeutic cloning and only ban the implantation of a cloned embryo to create a baby.

In Russia and in China, the information we have does not allow a clear picture, but also implies extended research activities. Recent news, however, suggests that a leading scientist in China, Lu Guangxiu of the Xiangya school of medicine in southern China's Hunan province, has cloned more than 30 human embryos. These embryos are said to have been grown to a 200-cell stage, large enough to harvest embryonic stem cells. Up to now cloned embryos had been grown only to a 6-cell stage. At least five laboratories in China are known to be engaged in the research and all are said to have made great progress, due in part to the lack of any legal barriers.

This brief overview shows that the situation is very different in the various national contexts. This underlines the necessity of a global dialogue on this issue. The ethical questions at stake are clear: Can human life in its first days of existence be considered equally worthy of protection as in later stages? Does the affirmation of human dignity, supported by a broad global consensus, have concrete consequences for the ethical and legal assessment of embryonic stem cell research? Can the good ends for which this research is conducted outweigh the ethical reservation one might have against it? And what is it, exactly, that we call "human dignity"?

These questions are even more urgent if we look at the other issue which is presently at the centre of bio-ethical debate: cloning. Here we must distinguish two types of cloning: While in reproductive cloning it is intended to create an embryo which is actually to be born and to grow up, in therapeutic cloning the cloning technique is used only for the purpose of generating human embryonic stem cells.

Reproductive cloning

The reproductive cloning of human beings has for a long time been a favourite subject of science fiction movies. We now know that it is not science fiction any more, even though no one knows exactly the extent of cloning experiments already going on. The news media regularly reports about efforts of this kind. The Italian doctor Severino Antinori has announced that he has begun the procedure necessary for producing a cloned baby; the same has been reported about the American religious sect "Clone Aid", which expects the "new creation" to arrive through cloning technology. None of these groups or persons have a basis in the professional medical world. But there is also hardly any doubt that they have access to the technology and the knowledge to perform the procedure which could lead to a cloned human being, even though this procedure is still connected with a high risk of failure.