Human Cloning - Saskatchewan Elocution and Debate Association

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Seeing Double: The Cloning Conundrum Page 2 of 8 Canadian Speeches, November-December 2002 for 12 days before they halted the experiment for ethical reasons. This outraged many people. The United States, Canada, and many other countries began seriously considering laws to ban human cloning. In the year 2000, only 10% of polled Canadians were in favor of cloning. Despite little public support, some businesses are racing to clone the first human. Perhaps the most implausible is Clonaid, a company formed by the Reaelian Movement, a spiritual group which believes that human life originated with visitors from outerspace. In 2000, Clonaid, claiming to be the first human cloning company, reported that it was going to clone a deceased 10month-old child. It claims to have been contacted by many other parents who have lost children. Clonaid said it would produce the first cloned baby born in 2001, but no evidence that this goal was attained. ACT has had more luck. In January of 2001, its researchers succeeded in combining an adult human cell with a human egg and saw it begin to divide, but inexplicably stopped at the sixcell stage. In May 2002, Hans Schoeler of the University of Pennsylvania's veterinary school, announced that he had discovered a single misbehaving gene that could explain most failures to clone mammals. The Oct4 gene is crucial for early development and is usually not reprogrammed properly when cloned. Schoeler claims that 90% of all cloned embryos that fail to develop are caused by this gene. No solution has been discovered to reprogram the gene properly. As of July 2002, China is reported to have cloned more than 30 human embryos for medical research; an Italian doctor Severino Antinori claims the world's first human created by cloning will be born in December, but will not reveal the identity of the parents; and the South Korean government is investigating a claim that Clonaid has implanted a cloned embryo in a Korean woman, who is almost three months pregnant. While these claims are not yet validated, we might before 2004 have in our midst the first cloned human baby. The next few years will be defining moments in human history, as a great revolution in the way people view human life and cloning rolls on. LAYING DOWN THE LAW • In Canada. There are no laws passed prohibiting or regulating human cloning in Canada. The federal government has introduced a bill called the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHRA). The bill has two fundamental goals. Firstly, for people to have children safely and ethically, and secondly, to ensure research into reproductive technologies is done in a morally acceptable manner. The bill calls for a ban on human cloning to preserve and protect human individuality and health risks. It prohibits the cloning of stem cells, but advocates using human embryos and stem cells in research which are left over from assisted reproduction attempts. The bill denounces the buying and selling of human embryos. If the bill passes, parents will not be able to select the gender of their child or make changes to human DNA that would pass from one generation to the next. • In the United States. President Bush made a speech on April 10, 2002, condemned therapeutic and reproductive cloning, stating that, "Life is a creation, not a commodity." He said he would allow federally-funded research to proceed only on the very limited number of existing stem cells. There is still no legislation to ban cloning, but Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas, has proposed a permanent ban and criminal penalties for any scientist or company that violates it. The bill is entitled the "Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001." As a result of the lack of federal funding, much of the therapeutic cloning research that would have been conducted in the United States might now be conducted in other countries. • United Nations and the World. The Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, adopted by the UN's General Conference in 1997 and endorsed in 1998, banned reproductive human cloning. France and Germany proposed a resolution asking the General Assembly to create a special committee to draft a legally binding international convention
Seeing Double: The Cloning Conundrum Page 3 of 8 Canadian Speeches, November-December 2002 banning human cloning. The measure was endorsed by the General Assembly's legal committee, and now in 2002 it is holding an international convention to negotiate with 168 countries on banning the practice. FROM SCIENCE FICTION TO SCIENCE The word "cloning" is of Greek origin and means "asexual reproduction." Human cloning is the reproduction of genetically identical humans. The method for human cloning is nuclear transfer (somatic cell nuclear transfer, SCNT). In SCNT, the nucleus is removed from an egg, a cell with another person's DNA is inserted and induced into an embryo. This method, has two very distinct uses: reproductive and therapeutic cloning. The goal of human reproductive cloning is to produce a child genetically identical to another individual. Many people with fertility problems advocate reproductive cloning as a last effort to raise a child of their own. Therapeutic cloning's objective is to produce embryonic stem cells, which are undifferentiated cells capable of specializing into almost any type of cell in the body. With these stem cells, scientists can theoretically create transplant organs that are genetically identical to the ill person's, eliminating the chances of rejection. Possible treatments may be derived from therapeutic cloning for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinsons, and kidney failure. HEALTH RISKS It is unarguable that there are great health risks to both the child and mother in reproductive cloning. If reproductive cloning was attempted in humans, the risks of hormonal manipulation in the egg donor,, multiple miscarriages in the birth mother, and womb cancer are very real possibilities for both the donor and prospective mother. As for the cloned child, there is a very high risk of severe developmental abnormalities, and the possibility of being born with the genetic age of the person who donated their DNA for cloning. Dolly's genetic age is six years older than it should be, as the gene responsible for aging was not reversed in the process of cloning. This could dramatically shorten a child's life-span. Scientists have demonstrated that the life-span of a cell can be restored through cloning, but the technique is not yet consistent. Researchers have found that more than half of all clones that develop into fetuses form lifethreatening abnormalities such as defects of the heart, lungs, and other organs, many of them fatal before birth, or shortly after. The cause of these abnormalities is still a mystery. Gerald Schatten, a reproductive cloning researcher at the Oregon Regional Primate Research Centre, along with the rest of the team, feels that you don't have to know why cloned animals die of such bizarre abnormalities to know that the same thing could happen in cloned humans. But doctors don't all agree on whether or not therapeutic cloning should be banned because of these risks. Some doctors argue that prospective parents are legally able to conceive and carry to term infants that have a serious risk or certainty that they will be born with a severely disabling genetic disease. While some people may think bringing to term a disabled child is immoral, the parents hold the right to reproductive freedom. Many of the same genetic risks associated with SCNT cloning are similar to those for in-vitro fertilization (IVF), and are no greater than those with genetic disorders. For this reason, advocates say, reproductive cloning should be no more restricted than IVF or other established forms of procreation. Law Professor John Robertson argued before the American National Bioethics Commission (ANBAC) board on March 13, 1997, that harm cannot be accurately determined until trials are conducted on humans, and that the risks are justifiable if the prospective parents deem them to be. Many nations reject these arguments and prohibit human reproductive cloning on ethical or spiritual grounds and because they believe the risks outweigh any possible benefits at this time. HEALTHY REASONS TO CLONE Proponents claim that human cloning technology will revolutionize health care. The Human Cloning Foundation has listed many reasons why it believes cloning will result in better health, not worse. • Reversal of heart attacks. Pro-cloning scientists believe that they may be able to treat heart attack victims by cloning their healthy heart cells and injecting them into the areas of the heart that have been damaged. • Cancer. Cloning technology could enable scientists to learn
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Page 3 and 4: Brave New World Page 1 of 5 Smithso
Page 9 and 10: If Not Today, Tomorrow Page 2 of 4
Page 11 and 12: If Not Today, Tomorrow Page 4 of 4
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Page 23 and 24: Send in the clones Page 1 of 1 Cana
Page 25 and 26: The Threat of Biotech Page 2 of 3 C
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Human Cloning - Saskatchewan Elocution and Debate Association

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