Capital Report: Seeding the Cloning Debate

Abstract

In June, after months of hard work, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission published its recommendations on cloning, and was met by near silence. President Clinton offered up legislation much along NBAC's guidelines, banning all human cloning (but not of tissues or cells) for five years. But he couldn't find a legislator to sponsor it. Though polls consistently showed Americans were against human cloning, there was no momentum to ban it. Then, in December of 1997 the aptly named Richard Seed showed up at a scientific symposium in Chicago. Seed is a physicist by education who developed a no-longer-used technique for human embryo transfer. He announced to what a Washington Post reporter later described as a visibly uncomfortable audience that he had the ability and the team to do human cloning. He just lacked the capital. handful of reporters at the meeting didn't make much of Seed, and these were no headlines. Seed might have labored on in private, with his project--as expected by the scientists and journalists in the audience--fizzling out for lack of money and expertise. But then science reporter Joe Palca got wind of it. (Palca is the former author of this column and a workmate of mine.) He decided that whether or not Seed himself was capable of cloning, someone someday was going to do it, and Seed's plan to set up a human cloning clinic was worth a story. In Palca's initial 6 January report on National Public Radio, Seed said his reason for cloning was to fulfill Gods intention for man. We are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God, Seed said. Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in coming to one with God. Palca's NPR report made it crystal clear that Seed wasn't likely to be successful, and the scientist certainly sounded eccentric. Still, what had been at best a whispered dialogue on cloning grew into a roar. Headlines abounded. Interest groups began faxing reporters. New York Times ran an editorial criticizing cloning (perhaps inevitably titled The Bad Seed). Seed himself appeared On Nightline. Whether or not seed was capable of cloning a human, Washington went into action. president devoted his weekly radio speech to cloning, terming Seed's intentions profoundly troubling news. In his State of the Union address, he got a bipartisan round of applause for saving, [W]e must ratify the ethical consensus of the scientific and religious communities, and ban the cloning of human beings. Food and Drug Administration got into the act as well. agency announced that it has jurisdiction over cloning, meaning much more animal research would have to be done before anyone could attempt to clone a human in the United States. …