What are the moral differences between SCNT for therapeutic purposes, for research purposes, and for reproductive purposes? What, if any, are acceptable purposes for cloning? Is cloning ethically preferable to surplus IVF donation as a source of embryos for research or stem cell harvesting?
Introduction
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) or cloning involves replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg cell with the material from the nucleus of a “somatic cell” and stimulating this cell to begin dividing. Once the cell begins dividing, stem cells can be extracted 5-6 days later and used for research or therapy, or reproductive purposes. Research cloning has been used by scientists to develop powerful new drugs and useful bacteria in the lab. Therapeutic cloning is when the process is used for treatment purposes and reproductive cloning is intended to create living beings by cloning embryos.
Therapeutic and Reproductive Cloning
There are moral differences in these three applications of cloning. Therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning have been found to lead to a commoditization of biological material. This criticism has been applied both to the therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells and to commerce in sperms and ova for reproductive purposes. Ruth Macklin (1994) proposed a law to prohibit a commercial market for embryos. According to the notion of self-ownership the person from whom a biological material originates is its true owner and hence buying and selling of biologically donated material is considered morally wrong. As therapeutic and reproductive cloning favor commoditization of biological material, they are widely perceived as immoral.
Research Cloning
Participating in research involves three elements: exposure to risks; performance of research mandated behaviors; and contribution to answering a research question (Wendler, 2002). All these three elements are present in a traditional research model. In a standard drug trial, an individual faces risk as a result of taking an experimental drug in a way that helps investigators determine whether the drug might be clinically useful. However, research on stored biological materials involves varying subsets of the three elements of research involvement. For instance, research on biological samples can be harmful to the sources even though investigators never interact with the sources or ask them to do anything. Moral issues regarding research cloning can be categorized into informed consent, anonymity, and commercialization.
Informed Consent
According to Ashcroft (2000), people are obliged to take part in research that benefits humanity, sometimes it is impossible to get consent and at times it would be unethical to disturb the donors to ask them to give consent to new uses of the donated sample (Hansson, 2004). But studies show that some people would like to know how the biological samples they are donating are going to be used (Hansson, 2004).
Human organs and tissues have been stored for research and demonstration purposes for a long time. More recently, in many research projects, blood and other biological samples have been saved for later use. However, a common problem is that though the person may have consented to the use of his biological samples for genetic research, he may not be aware of the future developments of genetic research to which his sample may be used. Hence it may not be right to use a person’s biological sample that had been obtained in the past for a recent research issue.
Therefore presently many projects are aimed at collecting and analyzing a large number of samples for particular research with informed consent for that particular project. In Iceland, an American biotechnological company, decode Genetics, has obtained the right to collect a biobank with DNA from the whole population and combine this information with the country’s health records. The project is based on “presumed consent”(Hansson, 2004). This means that the health records of all people are included unless a person opts out, which has been about 7% of the population in this case (Hansson, 2004). Hence informed consent in the case of research cloning is vital and it is best if consent is obtained for specific projects or research areas.
Privacy
Consider the case of DNA biobanks. When a person’s DNA is studied along with his health records, there can be important correlations made between genes, environment, and illness. But such genitive information and lifestyle information are privacy sensitive and require information of consent from the individual to be considered morally right. It is possible for genetic information to be misused. If a person’s DNA reveals that he is likely to get some disease, he is likely to face social prejudice and discrimination from insurers and employers (Wendler, 2002). Hence for research cloning to be moral, genetic information should be kept private.
Commoditization
In the United States, healthcare providers are charging patients for material donated to them by others. This situation has created a market for specialized companies, called bio-repositories that collect banks of human tissue for sale to other companies. Biological material is seen here as a commodity that can be bought and sold. Some people feel that this process is disrespectful to human life. However, several authors have argued that a market for biological material can be socially beneficial. Resnik (2001) calls for regulations in the commerce of biological materials (Hansson, 2004).
Cloning versus the use of surplus IVF embryos
Cloning involves research on pre-implanted embryos and holds promise for the successful application of pluripotent stem cells in the clinical treatment of severe diseases. It is definitely ethically preferable, compared to the use of surplus embryos produced during in-vitro fertilization procedures because there is no intention of culturing the embryo created by cloning into a human being as in the case of embryos created as surplus during IVF. Moreover, cloning does not involve sexual fertilization as in the case of surplus IVF embryos.
Conclusion
Somatic nuclear cell transfer is seen as a key research area to solving many of humanities problems. But there is a general debate on how far it is moral to use biological materials from individuals for research, therapeutic and reproductive purposes. Three important factors to be considered are informed consent, privacy, and commoditization. If the market for biological materials is regulated properly, the privacy of genetic information is maintained and informed consent is obtained from donors for specific projects, somatic nuclear cell transfer can be seen as a moral act.
Bibliography
Hansson, Ove Sven (2004). The Ethics of Biobanks. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. Volume 13. 319–326.
Wendler, David (2002). What Research with Stored Samples Teaches us about Research with Human Subjects. Bioethics. Volume 16. Number 1.