Cloning Humans for Organs

Cloning Humans for Organs:

Introduction:

On June 26, 2000, scientists involved in the Human Genome Project announced their success in mapping the human genome. This has created an enormous controversy over property rights in human tissue. With advances in biotechnology and the advent in cloning, it seems likely that these issues will continue to cause controversy in the years to come.

As the shortage of organs available for transplantation continues to grow, new methods of obtaining organs and tissues are being developed. These technologies raise several issues, including the extent of property interest people have in their own tissues and implications of the potential patenting of cloned organs and transgenic animals. Such an interest should extend to organs cloned in a lab, but not to organs of a human clone or to research innovations obtained through the use of donor DNA.

The need for a readily available source of transplantable organs and tissues becomes greater each year. Even though the number of organ transplants increases each year, so does the number of people waiting for a compatible organ. Because of consent requirements and compatibility problems, the traditional sources of transplantable organs such as cadaveric organ donations are inadequate to meet the growing demand. Consequently, scientists have begun to look to alternative sources for transplantable organs, one of the most promising sources being cloned organs.

One of the most beneficial potential uses of new cloning technology is the possibility of cloning to obtain tissues for transplants. Before the arrival of Dolly, the sheep from Scotland, the prospect of successfully cloning humans seemed closer to science fiction than to reality.

Methods of Cloning:

Cloning, in its simplest sense, refers to a precise genetic copy of a molecule, cell, plant, animal, or human being. There are four separate ways to clone. The first two methods, however, cannot be used to produce a cloned human. The simplest of the four processes, molecular cloning involves copying and amplifying DNA gene fragments in a host cell to produce large quantities of DNA for use in experiments. As its name indicates, cellular cloning occurs at the cellular level, by growing cells in a culture in a laboratory to produce a cell line.

The two remaining methods of cloning, blastomere separation and nuclear transplantation cloning ("SNTC") are capable of producing a cloned human. Blastomere separation involves the splitting of an embryo soon after fertilisation (while in the 2 - 8 cell stage). Each resulting cell is capable of producing an entire organism, genetically identical to the others. Like blastomere separation, SNTC is capable of producing a cloned human. SNTC, the technology that was used to produce Dolly, was an important breakthrough. In SNTC, the nucleus is removed from an egg cell, then is replaced with a nucleus from a somatic cell. By starving adult cells of nutrients, the cells become inactive. Once the cells are inactivated, scientists can introduce DNA from a differentiated cell, and essentially reprogram DNA to express all of its genes. The resulting cell is capable of producing an animal genetically identical to the DNA donor.

Despite proposed legislation aimed at banning the cloning of human beings, the prospect of cloning raises interesting possibilities for the field of organ transplantation. The current shortage of organs available for transplantation is due in large part to the problems involved in finding a suitable donor. The biggest reason as to why transplants fail is because of the rejection of the transplanted organ. The closer the match between the donor and the recipient, the better the chances are for success. Consequently, identical twins are ideal donors (i.e.: clones). There is no risk of rejection because the clone would contain the same genetic material as the organ recipient. In this case the clone would essentially be a younger version of the recipient. For this reason, it is extremely beneficial.

Risk Factors Involved:

Even so, there are still several risks involved with cloning. An obvious one is the health risk from the mutations of genes. A particular worry is the possibility that the genetic material used from the adult will continue to age so that the genes in a new - born baby clone could be, say, 37 years old or more on the day of birth. Many attempts at animal cloning produced disfigured monsters with severe abnormalities. This means that creating cloned embryos, implanting and destroying "imperfect" ones as they grow in the womb will supposedly eliminate any problems. However, some mutations do not appear until after birth. A cloned cow recently died several weeks after birth with a huge abnormality of blood cell production. Dolly died prematurely of a severe lung disease in February of 2003 and also suffered from arthritis at an unexpectedly early age. Even if cloned babies are born apparently normal, they will still have to wait at least twenty years to be sure that they are not going to have problems later, for example, growing old too fast.

There would also be emotional risks - a child grows up knowing her mother is her sister, her grandmother is her mother, and her father is her brother in law. Every time the "mother" looks at her clone, she sees herself growing up. What happens to a marriage when the "father" sees the exact replica of the beautiful 18-year-old woman he fell in love with 35 years ago? No incest is involved, technically. The family environment will be completely different than the other twin experienced. That itself will place a great deal of pressure on the emotional development of the child.

There is also the risk of abuse of the technology. What would Hitler have done with cloning technology if it was available in the 1940's? There are powerful leaders in every generation that will seek to abuse this technology for their own purposes. Going ahead with cloning technology makes this far more likely.

Forms of Cloning:

There is another suggested use of human clones as organ donors, which was aroused in 1997. Not long after Dolly, a group of British scientists announced that they had created a headless frog named Freddy. This announcement brought with it the speculation that scientists may be able to apply the same technology used to create headless frogs to human embryos. In effect, this would be creating headless human clones for the purpose of increasing the supply of organs and tissues available for transplantation.

Although it may sound ghoulish, the creations of brain - dead human clones as a source of organs, may have certain advantages