"The grisly science of embryo cloning".(response to Roger Highfield, The Daily Telegraph, August 2000)

An article by Roger Highfield, the science correspondent of The Daily Telegraph, appeared under this headline in London's Week in August 2000. Highfield described how recent authors distinguish between reproductive cloning, in which a new animal or human being is created from one "parent" and therapeutic cloning, the purpose of which is regenerative therapy. Such therapy uses material taken from human embryos as therapeutic products in the (possible future) treatment of certain illnesses. The two-way classification is not accurate because both types of cloning are reproductive: it's just that in (so-called) therapeutic cloning a human being is created in vitro for the specific purpose, first, of experimentation, and secondly, if the research is successful, so that its tissues can be mined for use in medical treatments. In other words embryos will be created and then killed in order that other human beings can be cured of diseases. If the research is successful, thousands or millions of human embryos will be created and destroyed in order to produce medical products. The program both depends on and creates a deep contempt for (early) human life. Highfield's explanation of the technique of therapeutic cloning runs as follows:

 
   Regenerative therapy involves the harvesting of pluripotent or stem cells, 
   that is, cells which can give rise to many different kinds of tissue. Such 
   cells exist in embryos; adult stem cells, by contrast, normally only give 
   rise to specialized tissues. Implanted pluripotent stem cells have been 
   shown to regenerate a wide range of tissues including cardiac muscle and 
   damaged nerves. But there is a serious obstacle: if a patient is given an 
   organ grown from someone else's cells the organ is likely to be rejected. 
   The proposed solution is to create cells from the patient himself. In 
   theory this can be done in two ways. One method involves taking a cell from 
   the patient and fusing it with a human egg emptied of its genetic material. 
   The resulting embryo can then be "mined" for stem cells. There are two 
   possible sources of the human eggs needed for this technique: they can be 
   donated knowingly or unknowingly by adult women undergoing IVF treatment; 
   or they could be taken from aborted female foetuses. 
 
   The other method of creating cells from the patient himself would involve 
   finding a way to "rewind" adult stem cells, converting them into 
   pluripotent cells. That method would not involve the creation and 
   destruction of human embryos. 

Highfield reports that a problem has been encountered when attempting the first kind of regenerative therapy: embryonic stem cells don't always grow into the needed kind of tissue. Instead a special type of cancer develops, a mixture of gut, muscles, nerves, teeth, and facsimiles of legs and arms. In May 1996, the journal Neurology reported the case of a sufferer from Parkinson's disease who died a year after having a foetal tissue transplant. An autopsy disclosed that a mixture of bone, skin, and hair tissue had filled the ventricles of his brain.

Cloning has already been globalized. In America, then-President Clinton issued a directive stating that it will be lawful for pharmaceutical companies and private research establishments to fund experiments carried out on human embryos provided that the only embryos used are "spares" left over from IVF treatments. For those "spares" are already destined for destruction. Mr. Clinton assumed that the creation of "excess embryos" in IVF is unavoidable. But it must surely be possible to fertilize one egg at a time, in vitro as well as in the womb. The Washington Times reported that the president asked his Health and Human Resources secretary, Ms. Donna Shalala, to check out the ethics of the situation and she told him the ethics is fine--no problem. Clinton dealt with what he took to be the nation's only fear relating to embryo research by promising that such research will not be funded by American taxpayers.

Australian national guidelines prevent scientists from creating embryo cells for clinical purposes though the matter is under review by a parliamentary enquiry. Meanwhile a team at Monash University, which according to The Sydney Morning Herald "has secured a large injection of private funding," is carrying out research on imported cells extracted from human embryos in Singapore.

In October 2000, the Berlin paper Die Welt reported that a group of Australian and American scientists announced that they had created a "bizarre creature" that was half human and half pig and had lived for several days. They are applying for a patent at the European patenting center in Munich in order to continue their experiments "for medical research purposes."

In Britain the government recently set up a committee of experts whose task it was to make recommendations about human cloning. The chairman, Dr. Liam Donaldson, is the British government's Chief Medical Officer. He described his committee as "The Expert Group." Its brief was: