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Safer Child Thoughts on Biotechnology

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Biotechnology: Who’s minding the store?

It’s incredibly tempting, we know. Some tinkering here and there, and no one dies from cancer. Some fiddling with this and that, and we have the exact child we want. Some more tinkering, and we have a personal clone from which to draw spare parts.

Think this is far-fetched? In January 2001, Britain's parliament passed new regulations under the 1990 Human Fertilization and Embryology Act that allow a) cloning to create human embryos for stem cell research and b) the destruction of embryos for stem cell research. And in March, 2001, CLONAID, a Quebec-based company (founded specifically to clone humans) announced that it might be ready to begin cloning humans as early as April (to the best of our knowledge, this did not happen). Other organizations have stated they plan to clone humans for infertile couples.

Brigitte Boisselier, a director of CLONAID, is reportedly a member of the religious sect, the Raelian Movement, which said last September it intended to use cloning techniques to "resurrect" the child of a couple for $500,000. Boisselier wrote an opinion piece in the April 5, 2001, edition of USA Today arguing that cloning will lead to "eternal life." She said the process will - and should - happen, regardless of whether the United States participates. (In July 2001, Boisselier said she would move operations out of the United States because of federal pressure. As of July, human cloning was banned in Canada, by the European Parliament and was condemned elsewhere.)

But many experts say the technology isn't ready, citing only a 1- to 4-percent success rate in animals. Additionally, many citizens and policy-makers (including the Committee on Energy and Commerce) say there are "scientific, medical, ethical, moral, and ultimately, policy questions" that must be confronted. In July, 2001, U.S. Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson issued a statement praising the U.S. House Judiciary Committee for taking steps to ban human cloning.

It's true that biotechnology can be cool stuff – a magical genie in a bottle. It’s hard to resist its charms. Could you reject the chance to save (or "resurrect") a loved one, increase your baby’s odds of being born healthy or gauge your own genetic predisposition to disease? That’s why biotechnology is so promising, tantalizing, revolutionary, scary, dangerous and lucrative. The possibilities seem endless. But where does "exciting medical research" stop and "irresponsible biological tinkering" begin? Where should researchers draw the line, and who decides?

Don’t get us wrong. We believe in medicine and medical research. We're thankful for antibiotics, surgery, MRIs and vaccines. But some of the new research – and the apparent lack of regulation – is giving us pause. Who’s minding the store? Should we blindly trust that someone will? We don’t think so.

Humans constantly seek new ways – with varying degrees of success – to cut the cord to "cruel" Mother Nature. But she won’t be ignored; every tinkering carries ethical, legal, financial and biological consequences far beyond our euphoric predictions. We desperately need legal and ethical frameworks to help us think through and deal with current and forthcoming issues. But many people – our leaders included – don’t want to wait, debate or think too hard, and they seem oblivious to the scary possibilities.

Here are just a few of our concerns:

	Cloning humans: The moral, legal, scientific, and biological implications are staggering. Even the questions are repulsive, yet nothing’s in place to deal with them. For example: Would clones have rights? If used for "spare parts," as some advocate, how and where would they live? What happens when nature can’t weed out destructive traits or maintain a proper gender balance?
	Genetically engineered food products: What are the long-term effects of such products on the environment, on animal and plant life -- and on the human body? How does the manipulation affect the nutritional quality of the products? Can such manipulation cause allergic reactions? Already such manipulation is being done, even in "health food," and so far, there are few labeling or reporting requirements. See our Biotechnology in our Food Supply page for more.
	Stem cell research: A few years ago, a U.S. presidential advisory panel OK'd conducting research using donated human embryos and fetal tissue from abortions, and a spokesman said the hoped-for benefits (new weapons against Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s) outweighed any ethical concerns. Our ears perk up every time we hear the old ends-justifies-the-means argument -- because often, we don't think they do. Our concern then was that the research would encourage the deliberate creation or destruction of embryos. Britain already saw this come to pass when new regulations were passed allowing for both the cloning - and the destruction - of embryos for stem cell research.
	Reproductive services: These services help people who desperately want babies. But we see too much focus on people’s wants and not enough on what’s best for the babies or society. We're seeing a flood of deliberately single parents, 50+ year-old parents, and surrogate parents. Lori Andrews, lawyer and author of "The Clone Age: Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology," has called the fertility industry a "Wild West." She said these unethical, even dangerous practices are common: excessive commercialism, reckless experimentation (sometimes without consent) and poor monitoring.
	Fertility drugs: Overly aggressive treatment can cause risky multiple births – resulting in miscarriages, stillbirths, infant deaths and long-term medical complications. Is this fair to the children? Who bears the cost of such treatment? Who decides?
	Choosing babies’ gender and biological traits: How would "designing" our children skew societal and biological norms? Who gets to do it? Who will keep track?
	Buying eggs and sperm (or, in one notable case, extracting sperm from a corpse): Who bears responsibility for these children? And how will the children handle learning of their unusual parentage?

	Genetic "report cards": Genetic blueprints could flag genetic predisposition for certain diseases. But might they also lead to discrimination? Already employees have sued their employers, alleging that their blood has been drawn to secretly test for predisposition to disease. Who will monitor this?
	DNA testing of criminal suspects: Some argue that DNA testing is similar to fingerprinting and therefore isn’t an unreasonable search or seizure. In reality, DNA testing is much more invasive; it can provide detailed genetic information about the suspect and his whole family. Who will monitor this?

There are a million other pertinent questions. But asking them solves nothing until we have legal and ethical frameworks for dealing with the answers. Time is wasting. As our leaders duck the issue, the biotechnology genie has wriggled out of the bottle and threatens to run amok. We must insist that the debate and the regulation catch up to the genie, and we must do it now.

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