Subcommittee on Health and Environment House Commerce Committee ~ February 12, 1998 ~ Part 3 of 3
On behalf of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities National Conference of Catholic Bishops
Why, then, are these moral judgments suddenly reversed if the human embryo has been produced by cloning? Why is Congress now being urged to endorse the proposition: "The creation of human embryos by cloning specifically for research that will destroy them is a national priority"? It seems the cloning procedure is so demeaning that people somehow assume that a brief life as an object of research, followed by destruction, is "good enough" for any human produced by this technique. The fact that the procedure invites such morally irresponsible policies is reason enough to oppose it.
The NBAC approach does not even make sense as a barrier to cloning for reproductive purposes. For a great deal of destructive experimentation using cloned human embryos would be a necessary step toward the production of a live-born infant by cloning. We have all learned that as many as 276 sheep embryos, fetuses and newborn lambs had to die so that one sheep, "Dolly," could be produced. Scientists can expect similar results from initial attempts at human cloning " indicating that it would be morally irresponsible to make the attempt. Yet legislation based on the NBAC approach would give the federal government's blessing to such experiments. Researchers who discard hundreds or thousands of human embryos in failed cloning attempts could resort to the defense that such cavalier disposal of human life is exactly what the federal law requires.
Some will ask: Are we really speaking here of a human embryo, let alone a human life? By using these terms do we inject religious belief into this debate? The answer is emphatically no. Even the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel, which recommended federal funding for destructive human embryo experiments, called the early human embryo "a developing form of human life" which "warrants serious moral consideration."(5) If some wish to deny membership in the human family to human beings in the earliest stage of their development, it is they who impose an ideological filter on the facts. (6) To claim that one is banning "human cloning" by simply banning the nurture or live birth of human embryos already produced by cloning is to distort language and common sense.
The Church is also sensitive to claims that cloning is necessary for the pursuit of valuable medical research. We hold that "medicine is an eminent, essential form of service to mankind."(7) Research involving the cloning of animals, plants, and even human genes, cells and tissues can be beneficial to human beings and presents no intrinsic moral problem. However, when research turns its attention to human subjects, we must be sure that we do not undermine human dignity in the very process of seeking to serve it. Human experimentation divorced from moral considerations may well progress more quickly on a technical level " but at the loss of our sense of humanity. The Tuskegee syphilis study, Nazi Germany's hypothermia experiments, and our own government's Cold War radiation experiments will always be remembered in the history of modern medicine " but not in a positive light. Any "progress" they may have brought on a technical level is far overshadowed by their mistreatment of human beings.
There has been much speculation in recent months about the ways human cloning might revolutionize medical research on various diseases. In all these areas of research, however, alternatives seem to be possible which do not involve the use of cloning technology to create and destroy human embryos. For example, some researchers may want to use somatic cell nuclear transfer to create "customized stem cell lines" genetically matched for individual patients " a procedure that in each case would require creating, developing and then killing a human embryo that is the patient's identical twin. Yet even the National Bioethics Advisory Commission described this avenue of research as "a rather expensive and far-fetched scenario," and reminded us that a moral assessment is necessary as well:
Because of ethical and moral concerns raised by the use of embryos for research purposes it would be far more desirable to explore the direct use of human cells of adult origin to produce specialized cells or tissues for transplantation into patients. Surely, anyone who understands the need for ethically responsible science can agree with this judgment. One great benefit of a ban on human cloning is that it will direct the scientific enterprise toward research that benefits human beings without forcing them to produce, exploit and destroy fellow human beings to gain those benefits. Creating human life solely to cannibalize and destroy it is the most unconscionable use of human cloning " not its highest justification. (8)
Thank you for your attention. I would be glad to try to answer any questions.
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(5) Final Report of the Human Embryo Research Panel (National Institutes of Health: September 27, 1994), p. 2. Tragically, the Panel gave no real weight to this insight in its final policy recommendations.
(6) While some fertility specialists have used the term "pre-embryo"to describe the first 14 days of human development, a scientific expert who strongly supports embryo research recently wrote that this term was embraced "for reasons that are political, not scientific." The term "pre-embryo," he writes, "is useful in the political arena — where decisions are made about whether to allow early embryo (now called pre-embryo) experimentation…" Biologically, in the human species and others, an embryo exists from the one-celled stage onwards. See Lee Silver, Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World (Avon Books 1997), p. 39.
(7) Pope John Paul II, Address to the World Medical Association (Oct. 29, 1983); printed as "The Ethics of Genetic Manipulation," Origins, Vol. 13, no. 23 (Nov. 17, 1983), p. 385.
(8) Cloning Human Beings: Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (Rockville, MD: June 1997), pp. 30-31. The Commission here outlined three alternative avenues of stem cell research, two of which seem not to involve creating human embryos at all.
