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Wired News Debate: To Clone or Not to Clone By Kristen Philipkoski 02:00 AM Feb. 25, 2003 PT The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote Thursday on a bill that would ban all cloning, including therapeutic cloning, which some researchers believe is key to treatments for many deadly and debilitating diseases. Social conservatives and the anti-abortion lobby have championed a ban on therapeutic cloning because 4-day-old embryos are destroyed in the process, a practice they believe is akin to murder. The other side of the argument says hundreds of leftover embryos are discarded every week by in-vitro fertilization clinics, so why not use them for research that could lead to treatments for diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes? Four of the top minds in the debate took the stage to argue their points at Time magazine's The Future of Life conference in Monterey last week. The experts were deeply divided on the issues surrounding therapeutic cloning, but even the most conservative of the bunch could not assert that it is better to throw embryos away than to use them for research. "When a human being becomes a human being has nothing to do with stem cells because the issue is: Would you rather throw it away or use it?" said Wise Young, director of the W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University. While the vast majority of scientists oppose human cloning that results in a live birth, also known as reproductive cloning, many support therapeutic cloning. In therapeutic cloning, researchers extract stem cells from 4- day- old embryos. Human embryonic stem cells are master cells that can grow into almost any tissue in the body. Scientists hope to guide this growth to create replacement cells that could treat or cure diseases that involve the destruction of cells -- anything from Parkinson's disease to spinal cord injury. By using stem cells taken from a clone of the patient, scientists believe they might avoid rejection of the cells by the body's immune response. The assumption that therapeutic cloning is key to the success of embryonic-stem-cell therapies (none of which have yet been shown to work) has permeated the stem-cell debate and the cloning debate. On Aug. 9, 2001, President Bush declared that scientists who receive federal research funds could work only with the 60 or so stem-cell lines that had been created before that day. In reality, however, the number of usable lines turned out to be fewer than 10. Michael Kinsley, panel moderator and founding editor of Slate, pointed out a contradiction in that the president does not oppose in- vitro fertilization, which results in the destruction of thousands of embryos, yet he is against therapeutic cloning for that very reason. "I think it's inconsistent, and I'm in full agreement with you," said Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Georgetown University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. John Gearhart of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, one of the leading stem-cell researchers in the country, says cloning may not be the savior of stem-cell therapies after all. "I don't know that nuclear transfer (that is, cloning) is going to be the answer to getting around the immune response question," he said at the Future of Life conference. He believes that, instead, researchers should engineer stem cells that would avoid immune rejection in larger numbers of people, because tailor-made treatments would be too expensive. Still, researchers prefer to be unfettered by legislation. "Our country hasn't dealt with (the stem- cell issue) very successfully," Gearhart said. "In the end it comes down to the decision of one person, our president, who has to step in and decide policy. I don't think that's how the process should go." And now scientists face even harsher restrictions. A bill authored by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) would allow for a $1 million fine and up to 10 years in prison for creating cloned human embryos for reproduction or research. Weldon's bill is scheduled for a House vote Thursday. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced a competing bill that would outlaw reproductive cloning but allow for therapeutic cloning. The Republican-heavy house will likely OK the Weldon bill, which would lead to a showdown in the Senate. The issue has proven to be fairly bipartisan, with the staunchly anti- abortion Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) favoring therapeutic cloning, along with other famous conservatives such as Nancy Reagan. Although ethicists like Wise say the argument is not about when life begins, but whether to throw away an embryo or use it, panelist Daniel Callahan, director of the international programs at The Hastings Center, disagreed. "It can seem awfully arbitrary," Callahan said. "If you want to become a human being, you'd be best off starting as an embryo." He said he didn't buy arguments that not exploring stem-cell therapies is morally wrong because the treatments have the potential to ameliorate human suffering. That view was unpopular with the guest of honor at the conference, James Watson, president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and co- discoverer of DNA's double- helix structure 50 years ago. "That's just crap," Watson said. "If it looks like it may work in humans, it'd be wrong not to do it. For you to say the people who have Parkinson's don't need it is crap." by Kristen Philipkoski SOURCE: Wired News http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,57791,00.html * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn