Concerns About Cloning

By Barbara Valis

About a year or two ago, a television special entitled "CBS Reports: The Baby Makers" investigated current technology being used to reproduce human offspring artificially. As sperm banks, surrogate mothers, test tube babies and similar "1984" recollections flashed across the set, I recall feeling a little like Rip Van Winkle waking up in a new era. I became further interested specifically in the advances in clonal reproduction recently while reviewing Adrienne Rich's book Of Woman Born. Rich warns that cloning could lead to women's gynocidal future. Initially I believed her statement to exhibit extreme paranoia. However, upon further research into the possibility of human cloning, I realized that it is not such a ridiculous concern!

Nearly all the available literature on cloning has appeared within the last ten years. With a decade of scientific discussion laid out before me, it was easy to 1

"I have the weirdest feeling that someone was fiddling with my genes during the night."

see the rapid growth of genetic engineering earmarked by consistent advances year after year. Though to date there is no scientific evidence that a human has been cloned, there is enough being said and done on the subject to warrant women's attention.

Human reproduction as we have traditionally understood it begins when the sperm and the egg merge. Since the sperm and the egg each contain only half the needed number of chromosomes, both are necessary to begin the process. However, cloning is a reproductive process which theoretically would require only one parent. By using a body cell of a donor parent instead of two sex cells, cional reproduction would produce an exact look-alike of the donor parent.

In the cloning process, the nucleus of the egg is destroyed, either mechanically or by controlled radiation, without destroying the rest of the cell. A nucleus extracted from another cell of a desired genotype is then injected into the egg. The egg will then develop into an embryo with a genetic makeup almost entirely from the DNA of the introduced nucleus:

Although there is no scientific proof that a human has yet been cloned, another major step toward that achievement was announced in January, 1981. Newsweek carried a story about two researchers who succeeded in cloning mice. This is the first successful attempt of the procedure using mammals. The novel by David Rorvik, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man, purports to have cloned an American millionaire." When the author was challenged by the scientific. community for proof of his claim, he refused to reveal the identities of the persons involved...

In 1979, Dr. Landrum B. Shettles reported a successful first step in the cloning of a human: Shettles withdrew eggs from the women's ovaries with a syringe and placed them in lab dishes. Using a microscope and ultrathin glass needles, he teased out the nucleus of each egg. Next, Shettles removed spermatogonia-precursors of sperm cells-from the testes of the male volunteers. Unlike the nuclei of the sperm,

spermatogonia nuclei contain the full complement of 46 chromosomes. Detaching these nuclei, Shettles gently inserted them into the incubating ova. In three of many attempts, he says the eggs divided and, over a period of three days, grew into multicelled blastocysts, the stage at which a normally fertilized ovum leaves the Fallopian tube and becomes implanted in the womb. Such a developing group of cells could be implanted into the uterus...and the result would be a baby genetically identical to the male donor. In short, a clone.

Dr. Shettles' paper was challenged for lack of evidence and he admitted he had not analyzed the blastocysts to see if in fact they contained the matching 46 chromosomes of the donor. He said he was merely interested in seeing if he could get to that stage of development. He reported that the blastocysts were destroyed.

If it can be done, would human cloning be desirable? Geneticist Joshua Lederberg "champions cloning as a method auxiliary to natural sexual reproduction". Lederberg states in Paul Ramsey's Fabricated Man that superior individuals should be cloned. More altruistic thought suggests also that those who carry serious recessive diseases could be cloned to eliminate the risk of an overtly defective offspring while attaining "some degree of biological parenthood". Lederberg feels clonal colonies would allow for the free exchange of organ transplants with no concern for graft rejection. Some ethicists, including-Ramsey, suggest that Lederberg encourages clonal reproduction simply in the interest of science. Certainly Lederberg is not alone in his thinking that all scientific progress is unto itself a good enough reason to pursue advanced technology.

The stage is set for clonal reproduction, but many scientists are saying that the performance should not begin. The ethical issues debated by the scientific community in the last decade have not been resolved. It has been suggested many times that moratoriums be called on genetic engineering experiments. The ethical conduct of the scientist and his role in society are certainly in question.

Among concerns expressed regarding the possibility of human cloning are 1) that the resultant creature might be a truly human monster-what then? 2) that medical people are far from certain of the utility of the supposed psychological sameness of possible clonal brothers or sisters; and 3) that cloning would be used to produce sub-human hybrids. Further, the ability to manipulate genetic material is seen by some as a tremendous power. It has been equated with "playing God" and "usurping" the Divine. There is a fear that such a power is susceptible to political abuse and "poses a danger to the integrity and dignity of human beings".

I believe this issue to be a very significant one for women because of its vast implications concerning our role in reproduction. Until this time, however, cloning has been the prerogative of the male worldscientists, economists, capitalists and ethicists-who .have supported the research. With the exception of 'an article in the June, 1976 issue of Ms. magazine, very little query or concern has been expressed either by or for women: Robin Morgan notes in "Baby Born Without a Mother" that advances in reproductive techniques "could help realize feminist dreams or feminist nightmares. If women have no voice in the development of such techniques, we will become the victims of their [the scientific community's] application." Morgan suggests that women must discuss the subject among themselves, demand that legislators and medical societies meet our needs, reaffirm that most basic right of each women to selfdetermination over her own body, and most importantly, consider a career in genetic engineering!

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