Human Reproductive Cloning Research Articles

"Safety is the only issue" Reproductive Cloning of Humans: a fictional lawsuit

"Safety is the only issue" Reproductive Cloning of Humans: a fictional lawsuit

Stem Cell Research: Why Medicine Should Reject Human Cloning

Stem Cell Research: Why Medicine Should Reject Human Cloning

Human cloning laws, human dignity and the poverty of the policy making dialogue.

BackgroundThe regulation of human cloning continues to be a significant national and international policy issue. Despite years of intense academic and public debate, there is little clarity as to the philosophical foundations for many of the emerging policy choices. The notion of "human dignity" is commonly used to justify cloning laws. The basis for this justification is that reproductive human cloning necessarily infringes notions of human dignity.DiscussionThe author critiques one of the most commonly used ethical justifications for cloning laws – the idea that reproductive cloning necessarily infringes notions of human dignity. He points out that there is, in fact, little consensus on point and that the counter arguments are rarely reflected in formal policy. Rarely do domestic or international instruments provide an operational definition of human dignity and there is rarely an explanation of how, exactly, dignity is infringed in the context reproductive cloning.SummaryIt is the author's position that the lack of thoughtful analysis of the role of human dignity hurts the broader public debate about reproductive cloning, trivializes the value of human dignity as a normative principle and makes it nearly impossible to critique the actual justifications behind many of the proposed policies.

Broad Plans Outlined For APA’s Fiscal Future

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Association NewsFull AccessBroad Plans Outlined For APA’s Fiscal FutureMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:18 Jul 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/pn.38.14.0015“Transparency,” the new watchword of organizations everywhere, was a theme of last month’s meeting of APA’s Board of Trustees as it focused its attention on the Association’s finances and long-term fiscal future.Trustees agreed to place financial information about the Association—including 990 tax-form returns, audited year-end financial statements, and summaries of current year financial information—on the APA Web site in the form of downloadable copy.Trustees also adopted policies to increase reserve funds over the next several years, including a policy restricting spending of funds derived from the sale of APA’s land at 1400 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s.Further, the Board will experiment in future meetings with a process by which all votes that are not unanimous will be recorded and published in the Board’s minutes.District branch (DB) presidents and the chair of the Committee on International Medical Graduates (IMGs)—invited to speak at this month’s meeting—echoed the need for ongoing interaction between the central office and the DBs.Dianna Dell, M.D., president of the North Carolina Psychiatric Association, addresses the Board at its June meeting. She is joined by Chowallur Chacko, M.D. (left), chair of the Committee on International Medical Graduates, and Roger Haskett, M.D., president of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society.“Communication, communication, communication,” said North Carolina Psychiatric Association President Diana Dell, M.D., when asked by the Board to say what DBs most needed from the central organization. She suggested that the central office might play a “franchising” role, providing technical support and assistance to district branches for day-to-day programs.Area 7 Trustee Al Vogel, M.D., reviews financial data with APA Treasurer Carol Bernstein, M.D.The president of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society, Roger Haskett, M.D., reported on the progress of a lawsuit against Magellan Behavioral Health, and Chowallur Chacko, M.D., chair of the Committee on International Medical Graduates, emphasized ongoing efforts to end discrimination against IMGs.Haskett told Board members that the Pennsylvania district branch had closed two offices in the state—in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia—to focus resources on the branch’s advocacy and lobbying efforts in the state capital in Harrisburg and on the legal action against Magellan.Haskett joined Dell in saying that the district branch supports efforts at creating a centralized membership process.Chacko said he believed discrimination against IMGs was subsiding. Further, he said that there are many more non-APA members among IMG psychiatrists practicing in the United States than there are members. He urged APA to form a body composed of members of the IMG and Membership committees to recruit IMGs into APA.In other business, the Board approved the following:• Adding Philadelphia to the rotation schedule as one of the future meeting locations of APA annual meetings. Previously approved cities are New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, Washington, D.C., Toronto, San Francisco, San Diego, and Honolulu.• Restoration of a check-off box to the APA dues invoice and the addition of such a box to the membership application allowing members to exercise more readily their option to receive a free subscription to Psychiatric Services as a member benefit.• Elimination of the requirement for a letter of reference from an APA member for members-in-training who are advancing to general membership and for new applicants applying for general membership.• Dues waivers, upon request, for member reservists who are called to active military duty.• A position in support of somatic cell nuclear transfer research and its federal funding, opposition to legislation banning such research, and support of a prohibition on human reproductive cloning.• The Practice Guideline for the Assessment and Treatment of Patients With Suicidal Behaviors (see Original article: story below).• Position statements on HIV infection; confidentiality, disclosure, and protection of others with regard to patients with HIV-AIDS; and on HIV and pregnant women.In addition, APA Board members heard a presentation from pediatrician Fitzhugh Mullan, M.D., about the new National Health Museum to be located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The museum project, now seeking seed money, will be an interactive resource to inspire people of all ages to live healthier lives and consider careers in health and medicine. Mullan is vice chair of the project.APA members can access the summary of Board actions at www.psych.org/members/bot/bot.cfm under “Members Corner.” ▪ ISSUES NewArchived

Embryonic Persons in the Cloning and Stem Cell Debates

Public policy debates such as we find in the Untied Nations, the Singapore Bioethics Advisory Committee, and the US President's Council on Bioethics reflect behind-the-scenes theological debates. Although religious spokespersons agree nearly universally that human reproductive cloning should be banned; moral ambivalence rises when confronting human embryonic stem cell research. Rather than focus on beneficence (medical benefits), religious bioethicists focus on nonmalificence (embryo protection). The Vatican claim that stem cell research should be banned because it destroys embryos appears at first to rely upon ensoulment at conception; but a closer analysis shows that the Vatican position relies upon genetic uniqueness. Appeal to genetic uniqueness is inadequate for Christian anthropology; what needs to be added is a relational and proleptic understanding of human dignity.

New genetic technologies and their impact on women: a feminist perspective

In wealthy countries such as the United States, new genetic and reproductive technologies, including human reproductive cloning, are being developed. To date, the short- and long- term consequences for women of human reproductive cloning have remained largely unexamined. This article analyses ten common misconceptions about new genetic technologies, especially human reproductive cloning, and shows that women will bear the major physical, psychological, social, moral, legal, political and economic burdens of these genetic manipulations. Despite the great diversity of women and differing feminist perspectives towards new reproductive technologies, I argue that we need a united position which opposes human reproductive cloning. This article is based on a presentation that formed part of a panel at the Association for Women's Rights and Development (AWID) 9th International Forum entitled ‘The Genetic Revolution, Biotechnology and Women's Rights’.

Ethical Issues Regarding Human Cloning: a nursing perspective

Advances in cloning technology and successful cloning experiments in animals raised concerns about the possibility of human cloning in recent years. Despite many objections, this is not only a possibility but also a reality. Human cloning is a scientific revolution. However, it also introduces the potential for physical and psychosocial harm to human beings. From this point of view, it raises profound ethical, social and health related concerns. Human cloning would have an impact on the practice of nursing because it could result in the creation of new physiological and psychosocial conditions that would require nursing care. The nursing profession must therefore evaluate the ethics of human cloning, in particular the potential role of nurses. This article reviews the ethical considerations of reproductive human cloning, discusses the main reasons for concern, and reflects a nursing perspective regarding this issue.

What exactly is an exact copy? And why it matters when trying to ban human reproductive cloning in Australia

This paper examines the current Australian regulatory response to human reproductive cloning. The central consideration is the capacity of the current regulatory regime to effectively deter human cloning efforts. A...

Biomedicine and international human rights law: in search of a global consensus.

Global challenges raised by biomedical advances require global responses. Some international organizations have made significant efforts over the last few years to establish common standards that can be regarded as the beginning of an international biomedical law. One of the main features of this new legal discipline is the integration of its principles into a human rights framework. This strategy seems the most appropriate, given the role of "universal ethics" that human rights play in our world of philosophical pluralism. In addition to the general standards that are gradually being established, a widespread consensus exists on the urgency of preventing two specific procedures: human germ-line interventions and human reproductive cloning.

Human reproductive cloning a step nearer

We publish today a brief Commentary from Zavos (2003) on steps towards human reproductive cloning. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the first formal report on steps leading towards this objective except for occasional comments in discussion sessions (Edwards et al., 2003). Having never disguised his intentions in this respect, Zavos presents brief data on his approach to human cloning by utilizing methods seemingly compatible with cloning certain animal species (Zavos, 2003). This openness is welcome and timely, especially since so much secrecy has characterized this field.

Double Talk And Double Vision: Creating Science Research Policy On Human Cloning

Since the winter of 1997, when the world became aware that a sheep named Dolly had been successfully cloned, the discourse about how this idea might be used to make humans instantly became theword for all we adore and all we disdain about our future. After two decades in which ethicists wrung their hands at the prospect and were dismissed as alarmist (since “cloning mammals was not really possible”), suddenly the bleating, furry evidence appeared before us. Dolly became the symbol of a science gone out of control and deeply in need of public limits. Then, the fierceness and intensity of the arguments and the books rapidly generated that called for a return to a bucolic, unhampered “Nature” caused a correspondent alarm for the science community. How could research integrity and freedom to inquire be protected from policy that threatened not only to defund research but also to pack off offending investigators to hard time: ten-year prison terms and millions in fines? One goodway to begin to answer this question is to carefully look at the language of the debate on cloning over the past six years—a genre of immediate historical review. By such a careful reading, one can see how “cloning” becomes one large metaphor for the entire gesture of science. Such a history, read via the words of both the testimony of the participants and the final text of the major documents themselves, suffers from its immediacy but is deepened by the ability of recent memory and fine-grained attention to detail. A pivotal event will only look pivotal when we read backwards in ten years, but with a science so swiftly moving, it is important to record every twist and turn in the debate. C ra f t i ng a C l o n i ng Pol i c y, by Andrea Bonnicksen, is the best example of such a careful historical review. A political scientist and long a thoughtful assessor of advanced reproductive techniques and technologies, Bonnicksen sets out two essential tasks. First, she reviews the step-by-step,month-by-month debates about human reproductive cloning from Dolly’s birth to, as promised in her title, the human embryonic stem cell debate up to the spring of 2002. (Hence, it is not her fault that large sections of the book were rendered instantly out of date by the shifts in legislation in California and other states that have occurred since then. The professor using this book in classes will have the chance to hand out the new California reports and give a great lecture about how rapidly policy changes when it must follow emerging science.) This history reminds us of the key arguments that were made in the first five years of debates about cloning and how the arguments shifted when it became clear that the technique of cloningmightwell be used to advance research in histocompatibility for tissue engineering using human embryonic stem cells. At stake in such a history are the long-defended ramparts of abortion policy—with banners from the Roe v. Wade error unfaded, still aloft. B o o k R e v i e w s

United Nations and human cloning: a slender and fortunate defence for biomedical research

Numerous biomedical scientists have contributed to the wide knowledge on the growth of preimplantation human embryos in vitro, now improving every aspect of the form of clinical care. These data were gained ethically in many countries, to open new vistas including the alleviation of infertility, preimplantation genetic diagnosis and stem cells, combined with some recent reports on human reproductive cloning. After detailed consultations with scientists, clinicians, ethicists and lawyers, many governments passed legislation permitting research under their own particular socially-defined conditions. Virtually all of them rejected reproductive cloning; a few have accepted therapeutic cloning. These legislatures saluted the many biomedical scientists striving to improve IVF and its derivatives, recognizing their immense medical potential. A motion recently placed before the United Nations then recommended a worldwide ban on all forms of human cloning. Proponents included the Vatican and many Roman Catholic countries, the USA and others. Opponents included Belgium, China, Japan, Brazil, UK, Germany and France. Mediation was achieved by Iran and other Muslim nations, and led to a motion passed by single vote for a two-year delay. This may be the first-ever proposal to ban worldwide a particular form of research. It sounds the alarm bells for further research. It raises questions about the UN being an appropriate forum for ethical decisions affecting the entire world and its future medicine. Large blocs of nations committed to particular religions and outlooks confronted each other, a situation in total contrast to the detailed and widespread consultations made by individual governments when deciding their own individual ethics. This event was clearly a narrow escape for free research as defined by each country's own jurisprudence. It also places research on human embryology and reproductive biomedicine into a more critical situation than before. Current liberalism in studies on assisted conception, clearly threatened by powerful adversaries, will have to be fortified to maintain the current impetus into newer forms of clinical care.

Human reproductive cloning: the time is near

Reproductive cloning today continues to preoccupy the general public and its critics in a very controversial and often misleading manner. We, in the field of scientific and reproductive medicine, realize that our responsibilities are quite numerous and extremely delicate. It was not too long ago that we witnessed the atmosphere at the National Academy of Sciences hearing in Washington, DC (August 2001) on the topic of human reproductive cloning, although not entirely militated against by its concomitant scholarly document (National Academy of Sciences, 2002; Simpson and Edwards, 2003). As one of the invited participants, it was evident from the behaviour of the NAS members and their invited guests that this hearing was scheduled not to discuss the topic of human reproductive cloning, but rather to condemn it. From the beginning of our efforts, we have never stated that we intended to create the first cloned embryo and the first human being for reproductive purposes by ignoring the public’s concerns and the scientific critics. We also never intended to ignore the contradictory results that scientists in the field of animal cloning have obtained during the past years. We merely wanted to learn from all the difficulties that the animal cloning experts encountered, in order to take the criticisms and the public’s concerns as seriously as possible and turn them into positive developments. It was quite evident to us from the beginning of this debate that with further elucidation of the molecular mechanisms involved during the processes of embryogenesis, careful tailoring of subsequently

Toward scientific discussion of human reproductive cloning

Toward scientific discussion of human reproductive cloning

Human reproductive cloning

Human reproductive cloning

Reproductive Cloning in the UK: The Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001

Reproductive Cloning in the UK: The Human Reproductive Cloning Act 2001

The Astonishing Testimony of Doctor Brigitte Boisselier Before a Subcommittee of the United States Congress in March 2001

I think it has not yet become entirely banal, though it is certainly starting to seem awfully familiar, to claim that there is some kind of causal or at least instrumental relation between the development of biology, medicine and statistics since the nineteenth century, with their attendant sociological concepts of Man and the population, and the emergence of the idea of positive law and forms of government that appear to be nothing more than its scientiŽ c and statistically-oriented application. Thanks to science, we are now in a good position to see the increasing tendency of positive law and natural law to converge; such that positive law (as practice) seems to have become functionally responsible for the disclosure of natural law. Indeed, we have observed that the most basic axiom for the theorist of positive law, that “law is a thing of man,” is becoming ever more attenuated. Because the notion of a relation between science and positive law has become so familiar, the notion of the convergence of positive and natural law (as ideas) may give the impression of espousing a kind of teleology, or at least a theory of some open-ended variety of progress. Such a claim is beyond the scope of this essay. Focusing on the rhetoric surrounding the issue of human reproductive and therapeutic cloning (for no reason other than that the promise of these technologies provides an adequate occasion), this essay will serve as a preliminary framework for study of the developing amalgamation of ideas and forces that has been characterized at one time as positive law, at another as government, at another as religion, and at another as science, which at the present moment collaborate to offer a challenge to the conventional sociology and to the conventional deŽ nitions of law, via a strange promise for the real transformation of human life and concomitant deŽ nitions of the living. This essay will tell the story of a sort of

Ethical dimensions of therapeutic human cloning

Therapeutic human cloning has the potential significantly to reduce human suffering and enhance human happiness. This is the main ethical argument in its favour. The main ethical arguments against it centre on questions to do with the moral status of the human embryo. A subsidiary set of arguments arises from the connections between therapeutic human cloning and reproductive cloning. Most of the ethical questions concerning the status of the human embryo have long been examined in the context of abortion, though they are being re-examined in the context of genetic screening and embryo research. A consensus on such matters seems extremely unlikely to result in the near future. The current role of ethicists may not, therefore, be so much to attempt to produce a definitive answer to the question of the status of the human embryo at the very early developmental stages at which therapeutic human cloning would take place, but more to help clarify arguments and indicate the implications of particular approaches. That is what this paper seeks to do.

Human cloning and our sense of self.

This Viewpoint formulates and responds to three lines of argument concerning human reproductive cloning's potential to undermine our sense of self or identity. First, cloning would undermine our sense of individuality or uniqueness. But it could only undermine our genetic uniqueness, not our full individuality. Second, cloning would undermine the value or worth of human beings. But it would not make individuals replaceable or of any less moral worth. Third, a clone's freedom or autonomy to construct his or her own life would be undermined by the presence of an earlier twin. But only a mistaken belief in genetic determinism supports this feared loss of freedom.

Response to “Clone Alone” by Carson Strong and “Are There Limits to the Use of Reproductive Cloning” by Timothy Murphy (CQ Vol 11, No 1)

Carson Strong's article “Cloning and Infertility” has initiated a conversation in this journal about the ethical and policy issues surrounding the question of who, if anyone, should be allowed access to human reproductive cloning technology, should somatic cell nuclear transfer ever become technically feasible and safe. Strong's position in that article is that infertile opposite sex couples for whom cloning is the last resort for having a genetically related child are the only people who should be granted access to such technology, primarily because this need to have a genetically related child would give such couples respectable reasons for cloning themselves. Also, every child has a basic right to a “decent minimum opportunity for development.” Thus it would be morally wrong, other things being equal, to clone a person with cystic fibrosis or spina bifida but morally permissible to clone a nearsighted person, because nearsightedness is not sufficiently disabling to violate the child's birthright. With this caveat, he concludes that protecting reproductive freedom requires that physicians be allowed to provide cloning services only to that small subset of infertile opposite sex couples who would need it as a last resort, should human reproductive cloning ever become safe and feasible.