You predicted, I think two years ago, that human cloning would be here with
us, within two years.
I don't think I said that ... I predicted that human cloning would be with us
in 10 years and I still believe that is the case, because there is a demand
among a small number of people for this technology to have babies. It's being
driven by the marketplace. I think that, ethically, one should not use this
technology until they are convinced that it is safe and efficient, shown with
the use of animals. But I don't think that physicians around the world are
going to wait for the confirmation that it's safe and efficient in animals.
The best example I can give you why physicians are not going to wait as they
should is with ICSI, an intracytoplasmic sperm injection. This was a new
technology developed in the early 1990s to overcome severe infertility and
physicians did not wait to prove that it wasn't going to cause birth defects
before they embraced it wholly across the country. We can use that history to
understand how cloning is going to go. I'm not advocating the use of cloning in
this way. I think it is wrong, but it's going to happen.
Can you explain simply what cloning is, because [some] people think that
it's the creation of an adult copy.
When biologists use the term cloning, they mean something very different than
what the public views cloning as. In the case of Dolly, what happened is the
genetic material was taken from an adult cell and that genetic material was
placed into an egg whose own genetic material had been removed. Under the right
conditions, that egg with a complete set of genes, with a complete genomic
material, could develop into an embryo. It would divide into multiple cells and
that embryo could be placed back into a uterus to develop into a fetus and
ultimately into a baby.
What would happen in those relationships?
Well, in purely genetic terms, if a woman used this procedure to have a baby,
the child, the daughter would actually be the genetic sister of the mother. But
I don't think that the mother would treat the child as a sister. The social
situation would make the mother treat the child as a daughter ... we already
have confused examples of heritage right now. If a person's father has an
identical twin brother, then that person's uncle is also their genetic father
in purely genetic terms. So we don't look at things in purely genetic terms. We
look at things most often in social terms.
We have these confused identities and new forms of family, but we don't
deliberately create them very often. In this instance, we are creating them and
we are creating them within a private, market-driven industry.
When it comes to cloning, people are over emphasizing the genes ... the genes
are being blown out of proportion. The reason is because every day somewhere in
the world there are children born who look just like one parent and who grow up
and behave just like one parent.
A clone will be no different than children who are already born today. It will
pretty much look like one parent and it will have many of the same behavior
predispositions as the one parent. But that already happens, so nobody is going
got be able to distinguish a cloned child from a child who happens to look and
behave like one parent.
Do you think that the people who are proponents of using this new
technology, that see some real excitement in it, and see some possibilities
in it, will actually develop a new language for it?
... ultimately, when children are born with the use of this technology they
will not be called clones. There is a technology that scientists developed
called nuclear magnetic resonance. When this was used in medical scenarios,
people were resistant to it, because the word "nuclear" was there. So we
changed the name of the technology to MRI [magnetic resonance imaging] and now
everybody accepts it. The same thing is going to be happening with the so
called cloning technology. It's going to be called single parent children or
some other innocuous phrase that is going to be used.
Can you tell me where this new technology will emerge from?
Cloning is certainly going to emerge from the fertility clinics that exist in
this country and elsewhere around the world, because it's only in the fertility
clinics where the technology exists from taking eggs out of a woman's ovary,
developing the eggs in a petri dish and putting the embryos back into a woman's
uterus. That is done at fertility clinics. It is not done at biotech companies
or anywhere else. So when cloning happens it's definitely going to happen
within the context of a fertility clinic.
So even if 99% of them say no, all it takes is one clinic somewhere to not talk
about it and just to use the technology to give rise to children who are going
to be genetically identical to one parent.
Do you think that there is something coy or slightly political about them
saying no?
Oh, it's absolutely political. Fertility treatments are highly controversial in
this country. One of the things that president Harold Shapiro, president of
this university, and who is also the head of the national bioethics advisory
commission, told me is that when they had hearings on human cloning in the
United States about a year or two ago, he invited a whole series of fertility
doctors to come testify, and they all refused. They are a profit making
business. They're in the business of trying to help infertile couples have
babies, and they have no reason to publicize themselves.
You know what the critics say about children as commodities, as products, as
designer babies. What do you say to this ...
I don't think that these people who claim that we are commodifying babies have
ever actually talked to any couple who has had a child by one of these assisted
reproductive technologies. The vast majority of these couples desperately want
to have children and they treat their children as children.
This word cloning, indeed, the practice as you see it on the horizon, does
not greatly dismay you?
I am not dismayed by cloning, because I don't think that it's going to be used
in all of the outrageous kinds of ways that people have thought up, like the
egomaniac, for example, that wants to have a replica of him. Cloning does not
achieve immortality. What the ego maniac will end up with is a baby that will
kind of looked like he looked like a baby that will grow up into a boy that
won't listen to him. So he's not going to get what he expected. He's not going
to achieve immortality. He's just going to have a son. He's not going to be
able to control the life of that son. When people understand the little that
cloning does, most of these kinds of people will lose interest in the
technology. It's not going to accomplish what they think it's going to
accomplish.
So you may ask me, "Then why would anybody use it if you're not going to be
able to guarantee the child is going to turn out in a particular way?" My
answer is that the only people who will end up really using this are people who
can't have biological children another way and are going to be using this to
have biologically children, because what most normal people want is
unpredictable biological children. They want this genetic link to their
children. And if that's why they're doing it, not expecting anything except to
have a child that may not listen to them, that I don't have a problem with that
use of the technology.
You have raised the issue before about creating Madonnas, Michael Jordans
and the critics say that is indeed what will happen. At first, one can dismiss
that argument very quickly. But when you see how market driven this culture is,
how many groupies swarm around people like Madonna, clasping at her clothes, at
her hair ... it gives you pause, really...
Well, the question I have for people who worry about this star being cloned is
to say to them, how often do you think a movie star has donated their sperm or
eggs to a sperm bank today? I think the answer is none of them have put their
sperm into a sperm bank. They're not interested in getting the $70 back to put
their sperm or to donate their eggs, which is a serious protocol, into a bank
...
One of the issues that I raise in my book is that it might be done
surreptitiously. That somebody will come up and take a scraping from Michael
Jordan's skin and use that scraping to have a clone. I don't know how realistic
that is. But I don't think it's very realistic, because the child that comes
out of that cell, even though that child will be genetically identical to
Michael Jordan, I can guarantee you that there is no way that child will ever
make it into the NBA. Because Michael Jordan is more than his genes. Michael
Jordan worked very, very hard and it was this hard work and this spirit that
allowed him to reach the point that he reached. People forget that genes
provide a framework and the potential, but unless you work very, very hard
you're not going to get anywhere without it.
Can you describe where this technology could go that concerns you?
The most disturbing part of this technology is not the cloning, where you just
have a child born who happens to be related to one parent instead of two. The
most disturbing part of this technology is when parents are going to try to use
genes to provide their children with serious advantages.
Now the problem is that all parents want to give their children advantages. In
the United States, we have a market-based mentality, where we say that parents
who have money can give their children more advantages than parents who don't
have money. We all accept that. I think parents are going to keep going back to
the genes and say, "I want to give my child every possible genetic advantage in
the book."
That is troubling to me, for two reasons. One is that some of these genes
really will provide advantages. Advantages of longevity, decreased risks of
cancer and stroke and dementia, and so these children really will have health
advantages, which means that the parents who are unable to afford this
technology will have children who are disadvantaged. So I see this as greatly
exacerbating the gap between have's and have-not's--much, much greater than it
is today. That concerns me.
The other thing that concerns me is that parents will be giving their children
genetic enhancements that they think are going to increase the behavioral,
cognitive or talents of their children. And many times, they're going to be
disappointed. It doesn't mean to say that the genes won't increase the
probability that their child will have a particular talent, once we understand
how genes affect talents, we don't yet. But I think that parents may be getting
into this not realizing that all they're doing is increasing probabilities.
You're not going to guarantee anything. So you worry about how parents are
going to feel about children who don't express the genes that they got.
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