Written by: Debi Vinnedge, Executive Director
Children of God for Life
Brochure: Understanding Human Cloning
Release Date: November 2012
What Exactly is Human Cloning?
There are 2 types of cloning we often hear about “Reproductive” and “Therapeutic”. Reproductive cloning is the act of producing a cloned human being and bringing that person to birth. But therapeutic cloning also reproductively produces a cloned human being who is then intentially destroyed in the harvesting of his/her cells, tissues or organs. There is no difference in the two methods; the only difference is what is done with the newly produced human being.
While there are several methods of cloning, such as “twinning” (briefly discussed earlier), the most common type of cloning reported in the news is called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, or SCNT.
What Exactly is SCNT?
In SCNT any donor can provide the nuclear material from a somatic cell (a normal diploid cell with 46 chromosomes) from their own body that will be used in place of sperm to produce their clone. A donor egg is obtained from a woman, or as recently reported, from aborted female babies, and the nucleus of the egg is then removed. The method of transferring the nuclear material from one’s own somatic cell into the “enucleated” donor egg is known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. This is the identical process that was used to produce Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal to survive.
So How Was Dolly Produced?
As in any reproductive act, it involved the union of two cells: A donor cell (an adult sheep cell) and a recipient, female egg cell. 1) The nucleus of the ewe egg cell was removed 2) The donor cell’s DNA, taken from the udder cell of the adult sheep, was placed next to the “enucleated” egg cell in the petri dish 3) An electric pulse was used to “jump-start” the formation of a newly developing embryo 4) The embryo was implanted in the uterus of the surrogate female sheep and carried to term.
What Was the Clone Like?
The newborn sheep had the same “outward” appearance of any other sheep with a nearly perfect genetic duplicate of the adult donor. However, hidden adversities would surface in later years. Meanwhile, cloning experiments on other animals yield a marked increase in the size of the offspring, shorter life spans and serious genetic abnormalities. In fact, Dolly aged prematurely with a progressive lung disease. She died in February at 6 years old – about half of the average life span of normal sheep.
What Are Other Problems?
There were 276 failed attempts to create one sheep. Aside from all miscarriages and still borns, defective embryos were also destroyed. Scientists have had a success rate in cloning of less than 3% at best and the results are often grotesquely deformed mutations. Further, this genetic reprogramming can subtly alter genes with consequences that are not readily apparent but will surface later on – just as with Dolly. These include developmental delays, lung and heart defects, neurological disorders and malfunctioning immune systems. So how long before these same problems emerge in patients attempting closing therapies?
What About Therapeutic Cloning?
In this method, the cloned embryo is produced and then destroyed to extract the stem cells. Therapeutic cloning is supposed to create an exact genetic copy of one’s own body tissues and organs in order to treat patients without the risk of immune rejection. However, due to mitochondrial and other residual DNA remaining in the egg even after the nucleus has been removed, newly created embryos will never be an exact genetic match. And, as scientists acknowledge that fully developed clones have both obvious and latent abnormalities that surface later in life, so will any organs, tissues and cells taken from those cloned embryos.
Some State laws claiming to ban reproductive cloning actually allow the implantation of a cloned embryo into the womb for later harvesting of more developed tissues and organs, as long as the baby is not brought to full term.
Genetic Manipulation & Eugenics
IVF embryos are frequently pre-tested for inherited genetic disorders. This eugenics method called “Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) attempts to weed out and discard less than perfect children, prior to implantation in the womb. Modifications can also be made to embryos, through another method of cloning called “Germ Cell Line Nuclear Transfer” whereby the early stage sex cells are removed and then manipulated by adding healthy genes to a sperm, egg or another embryo. Not only has this “gene therapy” failed in human applications, but any genetic alteration made to the genes, good or bad, will be passed on permanently to future generations.
Of course this is no problem for the amoral: just as our so-called civilized world did to certain segments of our society in the 1900’s, forced sterilization will end the bad gene pool and abortion will correct the mistake!
Same Sex Parents Produce a Child:
Two women involved in a same sex relationship wish to have a child together. One woman donates an unfertilized egg and has the nucleus removed: the second donates the DNA and has it fused with the egg. It is then electrically stimulated to begin the cloning process and the embryo is implanted in the womb of either woman and brought to term.
Reprogramming Stem Cells:
In November 2007, two scientists Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and Dr. James Thomson published studies describing a new stem cell technique that produced embryonic-like stem cells by siply reprogramming adult skin cells. Immediately poitical pundits touted the iPS – or “induced pluripotent stem” cells as an ethical alternative to embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. Unfortunately, careful scrutiny of the methods used by both these and other scientists since would reveal that both aborted fetal and embryonic stem cells were used to reprogram the cells. This was no moral victory. And just like embryonic stem cells, fatal tumors and tertomas formed in the reprogrammed cells.
In Summary:
What you have read here is not only alarming, but one might ask how we have allowed ourselves to emerge to this point? Turn back the clock to 1973 and the Roe v Wade decision that was based on the court’s inability to determine when life begins. But for well over a century, scientists have known fully well that a new human being begins at the instant of fertilization.
No one questioned the size or location because simple cell biology attested to the fact that an entirely new human being formed from the moment sperm met egg and cell division began.
But somewhere along the line – between Roe v Wade and present day technology, we seem to have forgotten this simple principle, with some declaring that life does not really begin until implantation in the womb, and more radically, not until birth or even as late as 2-3 years of age!
It’s difficult to imagine that toddlers might not be considered “persons” due to their maternal dependency. Yet Princeton professor Peter Singer believes and teaches just that! As we progress in technology, new terminology is emerging Words such as “pre-embryo” and “potential life” are used in the pro-abortion world to the point where most people believe these are valid scientific concepts for classifying early embryos. It simply makes it a lot easier to justify killing them in order to help other “real” human beings.
For if life is not human until it is implanted in the womb, then scientists have full reign to do as they please without moral repercussion. And of course chemical abortifacients such as birth control pills or the “morning after pill” that prevent implantation would not be destroying a human being. And certainly, any protection given to embryos is a real threat to abortion rights.
It seems we have reached the point where human life is considered nothing more than a mere commodity that can be ripped from the womb or produced in the lab, destroyed, cloned, patented, bought and sold based on a perceived notion that scientific research must be advanced at all costs. Rather than progressing it seems we are reverting to a morally depraved, Neanderthal philosophy of survival of the fittest. Make no mistake: when man takes it upon himself to assume the authority of the Almighty Author of all human life, he will haved declared Himself to be a race in need of no God. And that race will vanish like the dinosaur.
For more information on Children of God for Life, please visit: https://www.cogforlife.org