A reader asks:
Why is the possible cloning of human embryos “intrinsically immoral”? Does cloning in animal species deserve the same judgment?
Answer:
Dear friend:
1. Some concepts
Cloning consists in the reproduction of two or more genetically identical individuals. It can be obtained in no fewer than two different ways: by twin fission or by nuclear transfer. Twin fission is the process by which a single fertilized cell, that is, the embryo in the state of a single cell in the very first phases of development, undergoes a particular division generating two identical embryos that will give rise to two identical individuals. Human monozygotic twins are precisely the result of a natural cloning. One can think of achieving it artificially. The technique of nuclear transfer consists, on the other hand, in depriving a fertilized egg-cell of its nucleus before the zygote is formed, then substituting for this haploid nucleus (that is, with only half of the chromosomal patrimony) a diploid nucleus (with all the chromosomal information) coming from a somatic cell of an adult of the same species. This would result in an individual perfectly identical to the one from which the somatic cell was taken. It is an “asexual” fertilization[1].
The discussion on the subject has become topical as a result of the disclosure of the experiments on animal cloning carried out by the Roslin Institute of Edinburgh (Great Britain) and by scientists of the State of Oregon (United States). Following the publicity that this news received this past January and February (1997), the world press became the arena in which the usefulness and morality of these experiments are debated. And just as some have shown themselves full of concern, others have shown themselves inclined to continue with the research even in the field of the cloning of human beings[2].
What is to be said of this?
2. Cloning in humans
What ends can cloning have in the human field? Many hypotheses can be elaborated, entering even into a strictly “science-fiction” terrain, yet a possible one if one bears in mind that day by day we learn of research and experiments that corroborate that we are in the hands of a science that has lost its conscience, its scruples, its respect for human dignity, and its fear of the destruction of life.
Embarking on this enterprise may respond to purely experimental and cognitive, lucrative, pseudo-therapeutic ends, or to a sheer challenge to human limits and to divine power. Thus, some propose cloning as a means of producing human duplicates which, frozen, could constitute a bank of organs tailored to the interested party; it can serve to create an indefinite army of automatons, of prefabricated soldiers, of second-class scientists or workers; it can be the variant for giving offspring to lesbian or homosexual couples or simply for those who wish for children identical to themselves; it can be the way of creating a “superior race” designed in the laboratory, purged of our present defects; it can be the solution for manufacturing individuals without a family on whom one can experiment without anyone weeping over the results and the losses. In short, science fiction and not so much so. What are we going to be surprised at?
That science can do it, no one doubts. And no one doubts that, if we continue shedding hypocritical tears and raising to heaven loud cries that are orphans of authentic and effective deeds, we are facing a not-so-distant future.
But, is it licit? No. Why?
The reason is that we are speaking of the human being and, in acting upon him, cloning perverts two fundamental dimensions: the non-derogable and intangible dignity of his conception and the dignity of his individuality.
1) The ethical problem of artificial fertilization
Artificial cloning presupposes the techniques of artificial fertilization[3]. The judgment on the latter is negative from the moment it separates the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative one. I refer to the documents that have already dealt with the subject with sufficient clarity[4].
2) The problem of the manipulation of the embryo
Cloning also presupposes the manipulation of the human embryo. In this case too it is immoral because it does not respect the principles that regulate the medical and scientific treatment of human embryos. These principles we can summarize in the following.
a) Principle of intentionality: every intention must be just. As regards the intention, it must be the good of the human being, beginning with the one upon whom one is working. In this way, every therapeutic intention is licit. Likewise, certain research intentions would be licit when they are ordered to future human therapy. On the other hand, mere scientific curiosity is not always licit[5].
What therapeutic intention can the cloning of human embryos suggest?
b) Object of the act: what is done must be just, that is, suited to the dignity of the subject upon whom one acts. This is verified in two elements:
a. Respect for the life of the embryo[6]. The technical work (therapeutic or research destined for future therapy) must respect the human subject upon whom it intervenes in all its phases, from conception to its natural death. Because from such a beginning to such an end (conception and death) the scientist finds himself before a human life. There exists no justification for establishing a chronological discrimination, that is, the arbitrary establishment of periods in which man may be manipulated[7]. This also implies that when the human subject is capable of personal consent, this must be obtained freely. When, on the other hand, he is incapable (like the embryo or the fetus), such a condition guarantees the liceity of a therapeutic intervention, but makes, on the contrary, illicit every purely experimental action.
b. Respect for the biological nature (structure) constitutive of the human being. Therapy and experimentation must develop along the line of the constitutive structure of human life. This holds particularly for the structures and dynamisms involved in the arising and developing of human life itself. Man can enter into human nature to correct it of its defects or pathologies, or to favor its positive potentialities, but never to alter its essential structure: “Genetic manipulation becomes arbitrary and unjust when it reduces life to an object, when it forgets that it is dealing with a human subject, capable of intelligence and of freedom, who must be respected whatever his limits may be; or when it treats him according to criteria not founded on the integral reality of the human person, at the risk of endangering his dignity. In this case, it exposes man to the caprice of others, depriving him of his autonomy. Scientific and technical progress, whatever it may be, must always maintain the greatest respect for the human values that constitute the safeguard of the dignity of the human person. And because in the order of medical values life is the supreme and most radical good of man, a fundamental principle is necessary: first of all to prevent any harm, and then to seek and pursue the good. To tell the truth, the expression genetic manipulation is ambiguous and must be the object of a true moral discernment, because on the one hand it conceals adventurous attempts that tend to promote a kind of superman and, on the other hand, positive attempts directed at the correction of anomalies, such as certain hereditary diseases, not to mention the beneficial applications in the fields of animal and plant biology useful for food production. For these latter cases, some begin to speak of genetic surgery, as if to show that the physician intervenes not to modify nature, but to help it to develop according to its essence, that of creation, that willed by God. Working in this field, evidently a delicate one, the researcher adheres to the design of God. God has willed that man should be the king of creation. To you, surgeons, specialists in laboratory research, and general practitioners, God offers the honor of cooperating with all the powers of your intelligence in the work of creation, begun on the first day of the world.”[8].
This fundamental text indicates the following principles:
– The individuality must be respected, even at the biological level.
– Any harm must be prevented.
– What is done with a therapeutic purpose is licit, provided it is not an adventurous attempt[9].
– It is licit provided it respects the line of the essence of man; but not as something that modifies human nature[10].
All of this can be summed up with the judgment of the Instruction Donum vitae: “Techniques of fertilization in vitro can open the way to other forms of biological and genetic manipulation of human embryos, such as attempts or plans for fertilization between human and animal gametes and the gestation of human embryos in the uterus of animals, or the hypothesis or project of constructing artificial uteruses for the human embryo. These procedures are contrary to the human dignity proper to the embryo, and at the same time they are contrary to the right of every person to be conceived and to be born within marriage and from marriage. Also, attempts or hypotheses for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through “twin fission”, cloning or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union”[11].
3. Cloning in non-human species
The moral judgment is different when it is a matter of non-human beings. Here too the criteria that must guide us are respect for the essential plan of the Creator and the beneficial or harmful incidence for man. At bottom both things are related.
The other beings of the universe are ordered to man and therefore he can use them for his benefit. But this relationship of man with the cosmos also has its limits and rules, and can be defined as a ministering lordship. It is a “lordship” because it is a co-participation in the work of God. But it is an administration for which an account is rendered, because it is a gift of God: “it was the Creator’s will that man should communicate with nature as an intelligent and noble “master” and “guardian”, and not as a heedless “exploiter” and “destroyer””[12].
For this reason Evangelium vitae expresses: “the dominion granted to man by the Creator is not an absolute power, nor can one speak of a freedom to ‘use and misuse’, or to dispose of things as one pleases. The limitation imposed from the beginning by the Creator himself and expressed symbolically by the prohibition not to ‘eat of the fruit of the tree’ (cf. Gen 2:16-17) shows clearly enough that, when it comes to the natural world, we are subject not only to biological laws but also to moral ones, which cannot be violated with impunity”[13].
The reservations that are made in this field are not based, therefore, on a false criterion of the intangibility of nature, but on the need for a rational dominion over it. The present manipulation entails two risks: the first is the ignorance of the consequences upon nature itself; the second touches the field of human intentions: where does the present genetic work aim? What connections does it have or can it bring for a possible application to the human field? The border between the genetic manipulation of animals and of human beings is a very blurred, very small limit, and those who threaten to cross it are not characterized by having firm moral criteria. The experience of the recent past fills us with uncertainty and well-founded fears regarding the future.
Author: P. Miguel Ángel Fuentes
Source: The theologian responds
Notes
[1] Cf. Elio Sgreccia, Manuale di bioetica, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1988, pp. 326-327.
[2] Dr. Ian Wilmut, who achieved the successful cloning at the Roslin Institute, stated recently that in “one or two years” it might be possible to clone human beings (cf. LA NACIÓN, 7/03/97, p. 3). While some have demanded that it be prohibited, for example, in France, Italy, and the United States (cf. LA NACIÓN, 6/03/97, p. 3), others such as Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of the National Institutes of Health of the United States, asked the House of Representatives not to “rush to close the door”. Thus, using the criteria of the ethics of circumstances, he opened up the framework of possible situations of liceity: “After having expressed a personal ‘displeasure’ in relation to experiments with human beings, Varmus said that one may put forward the hypothesis of some situations in which cloning in human reproduction could be ethically and morally acceptable” (cf. LA NACIÓN, 7/03/97, p. 3).
[3] We are not speaking of “assistance to fertilization” but of properly artificial fertilization; the possibility of an “assistance” to fertilization —and the consequent framework for its liceity— is another problem that would have to be discussed apart from this one. Cf. on this: Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation (Donum vitae), II, 7.
[4] Thus, for example, the Catechism: “Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ “right to become a father and a mother only through each other.” Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.” “Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union… Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person.”” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 2376-2377). One may also see: Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation (Donum vitae), II, 1-7; Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, Charter for Health Care Workers, nn. 21-34; Encyclical Evangelium vitae, no. 14.
[5] “These studies must be encouraged, on condition that they open up new perspectives of healing and of gene therapies which respect the life and integrity of persons, and seek the individual protection or cure of patients, born or unborn, affected by pathologies almost always fatal. Nevertheless, it must not be concealed that these discoveries run the risk of being used to select embryos, eliminating those affected by genetic diseases or those presenting pathological genetic characteristics” (John Paul II, L’Osservatore Romano, 26/11/93, p. 7, no. 2); Encyclical Evangelium vitae, no. 63.
[6] Cf. Instruction Donum vitae I,1; John Paul II, L’Osservatore Romano, 26/11/93, p. 7, nn. 4 and 6.
[7] Cf. SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Declaration on Procured Abortion, no. 12.
[8] JOHN PAUL II, To the World Medical Association, 29/10/83; in L’Osservatore Romano, 26/II/84, p. 23.
[9] Cf. Charter for Health Care Workers, 12.
[10] Cf. Charter for Health Care Workers, 13.
[11] Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation, I, 6.
[12] JOHN PAUL II, Redemptor hominis, 15.
[13] Encyclical Evangelium vitae, no. 42. It is, in turn, a quotation from the Encyclical Sollicitudo rei socialis, no. 34.
