Harvard to Clone Human Embryos

from the June 06, 2006 eNews issue

This week Harvard Medical School announced that they plan to clone human embryos in order to harvest stem cells that may one day be used to treat disease. Researchers hope that embryonic stem cells may hold the key to curing diseases such as diabetes, leukemia, and Lou Gehrig's disease. Through the use of theraputic cloning, doctors hope to produce transplant material that is genetically matched to patients - thus reducing the risk of the patient's body rejecting the transplanted tissue. However the research is surrounded by numerous moral and ethical concerns.

Stem Cells

Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different kinds of cells and thus can be used to repair damaged tissue and treat disease. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential to either remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell. There are two basic types of stems cells: embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are extracted from fertilized eggs or embryos. When the stem cells are removed the embryo is destroyed, raising a variety of ethical concerns. Adult stem cells, however, can be safely extracted from various places in the human body, such as fatty tissue, blood, and bone marrow. Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are already being used to treat patients suffering from a wide variety of diseases - with positive results.

Reproductive Cloning

Scientifically speaking, the word “cloning” is a somewhat broad and non-specific term. There are many different types of cloning. The most controversial and widely discussed forms of cloning are reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning.

Reproductive cloning is a technology used to generate an animal that has the same nuclear DNA as another currently or previously existing animal. Dolly the sheep was created by reproductive cloning technology. In a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer, scientists transfer genetic material from the nucleus of a donor adult cell to an egg whose nucleus, and thus its genetic material, has been removed. The reconstructed egg containing the DNA from a donor cell must be treated with chemicals or electric current in order to stimulate cell division. Once the cloned embryo reaches a suitable stage, it is transferred to the uterus of a female host where it continues to develop until birth.

Scientists have been cloning animals for many years. In 1952, the first animal, a tadpole, was cloned. Before Dolly, who was the first mammal cloned using adult DNA, clones were created from embryonic cells. Since Dolly, researchers have cloned a number of large and small animals using nuclear transfer technology including sheep, goats, cows, mice, pigs, cats, and rabbits.

Reproductive cloning is expensive and highly inefficient. More than 90 percent of cloning attempts fail to produce viable offspring. More than 100 nuclear transfer procedures could be required to produce one viable clone. Dolly’s successful birth followed 276 failed attempts. In addition to low success rates, cloned animals tend to have more compromised immune function and higher rates of infection, tumor growth, and other disorders. Japanese studies have shown that cloned mice live in poor health and die early. About a third of the cloned calves born alive have died young, and many of them were abnormally large. Dolly was put down by lethal injection in February of 2003. Prior to her death, Dolly had been suffering from lung cancer and crippling arthritis. She died at only six years of age, although most Finn Dorset sheep live to be 11 to 12 years of age.

Therapeutic Cloning

Therapeutic cloning is the production of human embryos for use in research. According to scientists, the goal of this process is not to create cloned human beings, but rather to harvest stem cells that can be used to study human development and to treat disease. Stem cells are important to biomedical researchers because they can be used to generate virtually any type of specialized cell in the human body.

Scientists, like those at Harvard Medical School, hope that one day therapeutic cloning can be used to generate tissues and organs for transplants. To do this, DNA would be extracted from the person in need of a transplant and inserted into an egg form which the nucleus has been removed. After the egg containing the patient's DNA starts to divide, embryonic stem cells would be harvested. The stem cells would be used to generate an organ or tissue that is a genetic match to the recipient. In theory, the cloned organ could then be transplanted into the patient without the risk of tissue rejection. If organs could be generated from cloned human embryos, the need for organ donation could be significantly reduced.

Some see therapeutic cloning as a miracle cure, however current research is still in the experimental phase and it could be years before embryonic stems cells can be used to effectively treat disease. The complex nature of cloning requires a high level of technical expertise and the cost of such a procedure would be enormous – too expensive for most patients. Even without considering the moral and ethical objections, therapeutic cloning is clearly not a viable option.

The avalanche of advances in the current biotech revolution is both exciting and frightening. The promise of new remedies and cures in many diverse fields of medicine has given new hope to those who suffer from diseases like diabetes and Parkinson's. Yet the biotech revolution has produced a host of ethical questions that have yet to be answered. These questions strike at the very heart of what it means to be human.

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