Cloning for Dollars

Have we really begun to value human life in terms of dollars and cents?

by Walter Jones III, M.D. 

Throughout history, people have held to the belief that human life cannot be so demeaned as to be assessed in terms of mere monetary value. However, according to the objections of officials at the Universities of Kentucky and Louisville last week over House Bill 138, which bans human cloning, this is precisely what is occurring.

As the controversy over HB 138 rages on, emphasis has slyly shifted from the more frequently opposed practice of reproductive cloning, in which a human being is created and brought to birth, to so-called therapeutic cloning, in which a human being is created for research purposes. Such purposes include obtaining embryonic stem cells that scientists hope can develop into various human tissues for the treatment of diseases.

Regardless of the end achieved by either of these processes, each specifically involves the creation of a living human embryo—an embryo that during therapeutic cloning (which is at the center of considerations expressed by UK and U of L officials) is destroyed after its stem cells are harvested.

What is most disturbing about the UK and U of L stances is their consideration, not of the central issue of the sanctity of human life, which is truly at the heart of the entire cloning debate, but of the acquisition of research dollars and top-drawer scientists at their institutions. Rather than worrying about how human cloning would impact the already-thin line between science and ethical morality, their concern has to do with the consequences of not performing such research, and all of these concerns involve money.

Although neither university has cited a single individual case, they say they fear the potential loss of research grants, the departure of prestigious faculty members, and the failure to attract new, revenue-generating scientists, and their supposed inability to lure large biomedical companies to Kentucky for financial backing.

Medical research facilities and biotech companies—not to mention the media hype—have combined to play upon the public’s fears that restricting therapeutic cloning will somehow deny them a panoply of cures for a multitude of man’s worst physical infirmities. The purported benefits of therapeutic cloning are expressed in almost promise-like form, but with their best intentions to save advanced human life, they consistently override the considerations of a developing human life.

Stem cells harvested from human embryos have not produced a single human benefit to date; however, a broad range of successful applications exists for the use of adult stem cells in treating such conditions as diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and various forms of cancer. Have these results been achieved without sizeable research funds? Are these studies not also being conducted by some of the nation’s premier researchers? Why not pursue continued study on the proven results of adult stem cell research—which does not necessitate the destruction of a living human embryo? Aren’t such projects weighed heavily by the scientific “funding powers” that be? And how many additional grants (which will undoubtedly take away from other, more promising and proven avenues of study) will be needed to clean up the mistakes that are guaranteed to occur from processes which are not only inadequately understood, but dangerous as well?

Years ago, human tinkering in this domain would have been highly discouraged in light of a host of scientific, ethical, moral, religious, and historical arguments. It illustrates the truth that “progress” is not always upward. Should human life be so reduced as to have its inherent value weighed only against the material gain that can be made from it? Delving into such processes, which destroy the very life for which research is designed in the first place, inherently violates the first rule of medical science, i.e., “First, do no harm.”

Walter Jones is public policy analyst for The Family Foundation of Kentucky.