A rchive Date
[ 20-02-2005 ]
Category
[ Science ]
sub-Categoy
[ Biotechnology ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/leishman.html
'Devious' case argues for nuclear transfer
By RORY LEISHMAN -- London Free Press
May 21, 2002
Should the law permit scientists to clone human beings?
Yes, indeed, insist some of the foremost bioethicists in Canada, including Abdallah S. Daar, professor of public-health sciences and director of the University of Toronto program in applied ethics and biotechnology; Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy at the Health Law Institute, University of Alberta; Bartha M. Knoppers, Canada Research Chair in law and medicine at the University of Montreal; and Peter A. Singer, professor of medicine and director of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics.
In a commentary with a misleading heading, "Ban cloning, not its life-saving cousin," (The Globe and Mail, May 9, 2002), these four bioethicists insisted Parliament should not ban the creation of human clones for the purposes of medical research.
However, the four authors were less than candid about their proposal.
Instead of plainly backing so-called therapeutic human cloning, they artfully argued in favour of the legalization of "nuclear transfer." As they explained it, "Nuclear transfer involves putting the genetic material of a mature body cell (e.g., a skin cell) into an egg cell whose genetic material has been removed. This newly created cell then starts to divide."
Nuclear transfer is not just a theoretical possibility. Advanced Cell Technology, a Massachusetts-based high-tech firm, has boasted it had succeeded in performing, "somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning) to form pre-implantation embryos. In this instance, human egg cells were prepared by removing their DNA and adding the DNA from a human somatic (body) cell."
Note the reference to cloning in the company's press release. In no way do Daar, Caulfield, Knoppers and Singer frankly state that nuclear transfer entails the cloning of human beings. Likewise, the four authors never acknowledge that nuclear transfer results in the creation of human embryos.
Yet, surely, the creation of human clones and human embryos is vital to the debate over nuclear transfer.
Despite skating over the issue of human cloning in their commentary, Daar, Caulfield, Knoppers and Singer did allow that nuclear transfer is controversial. They wrote: "Some believe full human life begins at the moment any cell fuses with an egg that then starts to divide, and that therefore nuclear transfer constitutes the destruction of human life. Others believe this is not so."
This is incorrect. Opponents of nuclear transfer do not argue the procedure destroys human life. Rather, they oppose nuclear transfer, precisely because it results in the creation of a cloned human being.
As for the natural beginning of human life, this is not a matter of controversy among embryologists. Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud flatly state in the sixth edition of their internationally acclaimed medical textbook, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology that: "Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual."
Advanced Cell Technology aims to produce a human cell that is no less totipotent than a naturally fertilized human egg. The only difference is the cell resulting from nuclear transfer would have the same set of genes as the person who donated the body cell whose genetic material was transferred into the human egg. It would matter not whether the donor of this body cell were young or old, dead or alive: The baby produced through reproductive cloning or nuclear transfer would be that donor's identical twin.
Canadians should not be taken in by the evasive language of devious bioethicists such as Daar, Caulfield, Knoppers and Singer. So-called therapeutic nuclear transfer entails the harvesting of stem cells from cloned human beings that are deliberately created and directly killed in a laboratory for the purposes of medical research.
A more flagrant scientific attack on the sanctity of human life is hard to imagine. The legalization of this procedure is an idea that Parliament should firmly reject.
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail. Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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