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Human clones could be ticking time bombs, warns ethics expert

July 04, 2001

Lausanne, Switzerland: Cloning of adults or children for reproductive reasons should be ruled out completely until researchers have discovered ways of counter-acting the health risks associated with the procedure, an expert on the ethics of cloning said today (Wednesday 4 July).

Dr Guido de Wert, a senior research fellow in Biomedical Ethics from the Institut of Bioethics at the University of Maastricht, told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting at Lausanne that he believed that the reproductive cloning of adults or children* was unacceptable at the present time because of the serious health risks children conceived in this way could suffer.

"Cloning carries substantial medical risks," said Dr de Wert. "As animal research shows, current methods of cloning result in high numbers of miscarriages and higher perinatal mortality and morbidity rates. Many animal clones die in the womb or develop serious deformities including diabetes, bad kidneys and enlarged tongues. Even clones that look healthy may be ticking time bombs. Human adult cloning would probably have similar adverse outcomes. Furthermore, clones might be predisposed to a decreased life span."**

Reproductive cloning of adults or children is the process by which a cell could be taken from an adult or child and encouraged to divide into more cells which eventually form an embryo which could be implanted in a woman's womb. In many countries it is illegal in humans at present.

However, Dr de Wert believes that possibly there may be an argument for making it legal in the future. He said: "If this technique became safe in the future, its use might be justified in some cases. It could be used, in principle, to treat some types of infertility, for instance when a man is unable to produce any germ cells in his sperm."

Cloning is such a complex area, both from the scientific and moral point of view, that there needs to be much more investigation and discussion about it before we reach any definite conclusions, believes Dr de Wert. Some aspects of human reproductive cloning are more difficult to justify than others. He said: "While any kind of reproductive adult cloning raises difficult moral questions, it is clearly far more problematic from a moral point of view to justify cloning based on the 'replica' motive, where one intends to make a 'copy', genetic as well as phenotypic, of a 'highly valued' individual, than it is to justify its use to treat infertility. It has not yet been argued convincingly that cloning as a treatment for infertility is clearly morally wrong.

"The ethics of human reproductive adult cloning as an infertility treatment needs further scrutiny and debate. While a moratorium is, at least for the moment, definitely justified, a definite and categorical prohibition of reproductive adult cloning is premature."

He added: "In view of the human and moral complexities involved in this type of cloning, research into the development of alternative types of infertility treatment, including the artificial transformation of somatic cells into germ cells, is of the utmost importance."

(ends)

* Dr de Wert places the different types of cloning into four categories: reproductive cloning of adults/children, non-reproductive cloning of adults/children, which includes therapeutic cloning (e.g. cloning for transplantation purposes), reproductive embryo cloning, and non-reproductive embryo cloning. His talk concentrates on the first of these categories.
** One of the reasons why cloned animals (and therefore, possibly cloned humans) may have shorter life spans is because the cells which are used in the cloning process acquire DNA damage as they get older. In particular, the telomeres (the sections of DNA at the end of chromosomes which protect the chromosomes from binding with fragments of other chromosomes) become shorter.

MW Communications