Sacred body? Stem cell research and human cloning

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

Meanwhile, credible efforts to clone human beings have also alarmed governments and led to a diplomatic initiative, started by Germany and France, to achieve a legally binding international ban on human reproductive cloning. It has already generated a resolution of the United Nations general assembly (no. 56/93) which was cosponsored by fifty delegations from all regions and was adopted unanimously, laying the ground for a negotiating process. The goal is to achieve a legally binding convention before the end of the year 2003.

   Binding universal norms [said Christian Much, Germany's representative, in
   his statement at the UN on 26 February 2002] are an effective tool to
   combat serious threats to human dignity ... Reproductive cloning of human
   beings poses a threat to human dignity. We think that only an international
   binding global norm, with its legal and moral power, is the appropriate
   answer. It will enable us to prevent dishonest competition among
   researchers and research institutions in the field of reproductive cloning.

His statement led to a call to action: "We must win the race against those who want to perform reproductive cloning of human beings and we can win it."

But while the consensus on the ethical questionability of human reproductive cloning is wide, the other way of using the cloning technology is not unanimously rejected by the international community, and not even by the worldwide church community.

Therapeutic cloning

The immediate cause for a wide international discussion on therapeutic cloning was a decision of the British parliament. On 19 December 2000, the House of Commons, after an intense and emotional debate, passed a law which, for the first time anywhere, allowed the cloning of human beings for the purpose of gaining human embryonic stem cells. As we have noted, the decisive difference between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning is the fact that the former never intends to lead to the birth of a cloned human being. Rather, therapeutic cloning promises to remedy one big disadvantage of the human embryonic stem cell technique. As with any organ transplantation, the injection of stem cells in a patient's body in order to restore his or her healthy cell growth runs a certain risk: since the genetic code of the injected stem cells is not identical with the patient's genetic code, the injection of these cells can lead to an anti-immune reaction by the patient. Knowing that this problem is the main risk in organ transplantation and that it requires the use of strong medication in order to stop the rejection of the new organ by the patient's body, one can understand why the prospect of overcoming this risk is so tempting. This is exactly what the technique of therapeutic cloning should be able to do, once it is sufficiently developed.

By analogy with the reproductive cloning technique, the cell nucleus of a patient's cell is injected into an egg cell whose nucleus has been removed. The embryo which begins to grow after electric stimulation therefore contains the patient's genetic code. After a few days the embryo produces stem cells which also carry that identical genetic code, and therefore no anti-immune reaction will occur.