OSV STORY FOR APRIL 13

Cloning makes it's move from science to politics

Why the president's bioethics advisers are consulting the biotechnology industry and eugenic theorists

By Mary Meehan

[WASHINGTON]

When members of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission analyze human and animal cloning for President Clinton, will they remember the advice of theologians and worried lay people, or the advice of eugenicists and the biotech industry?

A recent briefing book for commission members, which included a eugenicist's endorsement of cloning and his reference to persons with disabilities as "unfortunate creatures" who shouldn't be born, gives special urgency to these questions.

Following the news from Scotland about the cloned sheep Dolly, President Clinton asked the bioethics commission to review "the legal and ethical issues associated with the use of this technology," and to give him by late May "recommendations on possible federal actions to prevent its abuse."

The president also forbade the use of federal funds for human cloning and asked for a voluntary moratorium on private efforts to clone humans.

It's not certain that human beings can be cloned, but the Dolly experiments lead many to believe that human cloning is just a matter of time.

When commission members met in Washington March 13-14, they listened respectfully to Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Islamic theologians who suggested either an outright ban or a regulatory approach.

(Members of Congress have introduced bills to ban human cloning or federal funding of it, but action on them seems unlikely before the commission's report.)

Bioethicists Ruth Macklin and John Robertson were sympathetic to cloning in their testimony at the meeting. Robertson suggested that human cloning could help produce a child with "a healthy genome." He said this might be called "eugenic cloning," acknowledging that the term "has a bad ring."

Eugenics, the effort to breed a "better" human race, was more bluntly represented in the commissioners' thick briefing book for the meeting. It included a long excerpt from "The Ethics of Genetic Control," a 1988 book by the late bioethicist-eugenicist Joseph Fletcher.

"Good reasons in general for cloning," Fletcher wrote, "are that it avoids genetic diseases, bypasses sterility, predetermines an individual's gender and preserves family likenesses."

Fletcher suggested that individuals "might need to be selectively reproduced by cloning because of their special resistance to radiation, their small body size and weight, because they are impervious to high-decibel sound waves." Such traits, he said, "could be invaluable for professional flights at high altitudes and space travel."

Another reason for cloning, Fletcher said, might be "to correct for the loss of quality we suffer as our recessive defects get spread around in our common gene pool."

Fletcher's negative views about persons with disabilities were crystal clear. "Morally," he wrote, "honest concern for such unfortunate creatures should be based as much on an effort to prevent their birth as to help them when they are born anyway."

Later he asked, "And why shouldn't the family be protected from an idiot or [a] terribly diseased sibling?"

Commission chair Dr. Harold Shapiro, an economist and president of Princeton University, said inclusion of statements in a briefing book "doesn't mean that anybody necessarily approves of them."

But in a March 31 interview, Shapiro remarked that Fletcher has long been represented in the literature, "so I thought it was really quite important for people to know [that he] has been out there."

Shapiro said it's necessary to "believe in the moral worth of others who disagree with us, as long as they've been thoughtful and careful in their thinking." While he noted that he personally has "strong objection to" many statements in the readings, including some of Fletcher's on the disabled, he said that "doesn't mean that they should be hidden from view."

'Bleak picture'

The biotechnology industry, which has major financial interests in animal cloning, worries about any cloning ban or regulation -- and members of Congress are keenly aware of their concern.

When Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md., chaired a hearing on cloning in early March, she noted that her congressional district includes Montgomery County, "home of the third-largest concentration of biotechnology firms in the country," and that she is "fully aware of the benefits of animal cloning and genetic research."

While suggesting opposition to human cloning, she warned against "overly prescriptive legislation."

Strong opposition to human cloning has been expressed by many religious groups, some pro-life leaders and independent critics of biotechnology. Writer Jeremy Rifkin, a critic of the biotech industry, has announced a world campaign to ban human cloning.

Whether U.S. critics of cloning can or will work together, however, remains to be seen. Some oppose human cloning only, while others want to ban animal cloning as well.

Some pro-life groups are distracted by struggles over partial-birth abortion and assisted suicide, and some may not realize that cloning research could involve destruction of human embryos on a large scale.

Andrew Kimbrell, a writer and strong opponent of cloning, said he hopes for "a growing awakening" in the religious community about cloning, which he called an effort "to usurp the role of the Creator." So far, though, Kimbrell said, "I think it's a bleak picture out there." He believes that "the churches have done a terrible job" on cloning, partly because of a "Galileo syndrome" -- that is, a fear of being attacked as "anti-science."

Catholic ethicists Lisa Cahill and Dominican Father Albert Moraczewski didn't seem to have this fear when they criticized cloning at the commission meeting. Cahill, though, admitted to pessimism.

"Where people can make a buck," she said, "they will." She also noted "the irresistible attraction of research prestige" and bioethicists' "desire to protect our place close to the centers of economic and political power by refraining from damning commentary."

Meehan writes from Rockville, Md.

Copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1997; from the 4-13-97 edition

HEADLINES FOR APRIL 13

A cult of our time (editorial)

Kindred spirits on sexual morality

A misfit for the Lord

Saints (and sinners) in cyberspace

The Pope's big book

Invited (then disinvited) to dialogue away division