Future of cloning put under the microscope

Date: 26/11/1998

By Renée Cordes

THE birth of Dolly, the first mammal cloned using the cell nucleus from an embryo, took the world by storm last year.

While there had been much talk in preceding years about cloning, both the general public and genetic researchers were amazed at how easy it appeared to be to reproduce a living organism genetically. Suddenly, cloning human cells seemed within reach rather than something which belonged to a distant brave new world.

Since then, science has made great strides in reproducing human cells, although to date an entire human being has never been cloned. Most recently, US researchers have developed a technique to clone human tissue by injecting human DNA into a cow's egg cell, potentially allowing scientists to grow kidneys or hearts for use in human transplants.

The EU, which vehemently opposes human cloning, has no legal competence to pass legislation imposing an outright ban, but is nevertheless taking an increasingly hard line. “The ethical aspects of scientific research are now coming more and more under scrutiny,” says Hugh Whittall, an ethics expert in the European Commission's research division.

Given the legal constraints, the Union has instead decided to discourage the practice by refusing to fund such research. Both the research framework programme for 1994-1998 and the new programme for 1999-2002, agreed last week, rule out funding any research modifying or seeking to modify human beings' genetic make-up. Scientists are, however, still free to get funding from other sources, prompting fears it may be impossible to prevent them from eventually developing clone techniques for humans.

Late last year, however, the 40-member Council of Europe adopted a protocol banning the cloning of human beings. It prohibits “any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead”, and is due to come into force when it has been ratified by at least five member countries.

Reproducing animals has potentially far-reaching implications. For example, scientists can use animal clones to conduct medical research which could provide insights into human illnesses and produce lower-cost proteins for use in treating diseases.

It has, however, also raised a number of ethical questions. Some critics fear that widespread cloning of livestock will lead to a further decline in the variety of breeds. They estimate that 5&percent; of livestock types disappear each year as a result of selective breeding and artificial insemination, promoting concern that if this continues, Europe's farm animals will become increasingly vulnerable to diseases which in turn could pose a risk to human health.

The ethical implications of human cloning are even harder to wrestle with.

An advisory group on ethics set up by the Commission pointed in a report last year to several possible risks in cloning adult cells. The panel said it was unclear, for example, whether cloned individuals would have a shorter life-span or a greater susceptibility to cancer or other serious illnesses; and if so, whether their offspring would suffer from genetic abnormalities.

The procedure would also be immensely costly, said the group, adding that each attempt would require several eggs and an available uterus, with many attempts likely to be unsuccessful.

“Cloning as such is neither unethical nor ethical,” says Noelle Lenoir, president of the advisory group. “But we have to distinguish between cloning to make babies or cloning of cells.”

The group concluded that any attempt to produce a genetically identical human using an embryo nucleus, also known as reproductive cloning, should be prohibited.