The Ethical Considerations
Advanced
Cell Technology assembled a board of outside ethicists to weigh the moral
implications of therapeutic cloning research, which aims to generate
replacement tissues to treat a range of diseases. Here are some of the major
questions the board considered before the company went forward with cloning the
first human embryo.
What is the moral
status of the organisms created by cloning?
If
a cloned organism were implanted into a womb, as was done in the case of Dolly
the sheep, it could possibly go on to full development and birth. Because of
this potential, some members of the board argued that the organism produced in
human therapeutic cloning experiments is the equivalent of any ordinary human
embryo and merits the same degree of respect and protection.
Most
members of the advisory board did not agree. they pointed out that, unlike an
embryo, a cloned organism is not the result of fertilization of an egg by a
sperm. It is a new type of biological entity never before seen in nature.
Although it possesses some potential for developing into a full human being,
this capacity is very limited. At the blastocyst stage, when the organism is
typically disaggregated to create an embryonic stem cell line, it is a ball of
cells no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence. (Embryos normally
do not attach to the wall of the uterus and begin development until after the
blastocyst stage.) It has no organs, it cannot possibly think or feel, and it
has none of the attributes thought of as human. Although board members
understood that some people would liken this organism to an embryo, we
preferred the term "activated egg," and we concluded that its
characteristics did not preclude its use in work that might save the lives of
children and adults.
Is it permissible to create such a developing human
entity only to destroy it??
Those
who believe that human life begins at conception and
who also regard activated eggs as morally equivalent to human embryos cannot
ethically approve therapeutic cloning research. For them, such research is
equivalent to killing a living child in order to harvest its organs for the
benefit of others. But therapeutic
cloning remains totally unacceptable to such people because it involves the
deliberate creation of what they deem to be a human being in order to destroy
it.
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