DeMystifying Cloning

http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/news/article.asp?qEmpID=12

It is important to de-mystify new scientific technologies as they are discovered and developed. Otherwise, the public hears vague whispers but never really understands; then one morning, they wake up and a bold headline on the front page of the newspaper declares some new discovery, the media sensationalizes the whole thing, and awe and fear of the unknown settle in. This is what happened, in large part, with cloning. Most people hear the word "cloning" and think of reproductive cloning, creating a mini-me, the imminent danger of human cloning. But what about the other, less threatening types of cloning? What about gene cloning, therapeutic cloning, cloning not a whole animal, but a single cell? For the most part, the public hasn't heard and doesn't know about these technologies.
This article tries to open the blinds and speak in plain language--not scientific, Latin nonsense--so that a regular lay person can actually understand the process of therapeutic cloning, the pros and cons, what is understood and what is still being developed, and perhaps come to an informed opinion about the matter.

This article was published in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette in December 2001. The author lays out the accusations that have been leveled at researchers of cloning, before offering an understandable explanation of therapeutic cloning. The reader is allowed to form his own opinions, without being bombarded by biases.
Russel, a researcher who wrote the article, states that "we have been informed by many that 'human therapeutic cloning' is an evil form of research, equivalent to cloning babies to harvest their body parts. If true, this would be a truly scary prospect. However, it is a gross misinterpretation. Human therapeutic cloning may be a very effective way of curing diseases without some of the ethical dilemmas faced by isolating cells from embryos."
The process of nuclear transfer would allow the patient to re-nucleate an enucleated oocyte with a somatic (or body cell). This is the same process that was used to create Dolly. As Russel puts it, "In a dish, technology will exist to take that cell and simply convince it to multiply -- to clone itself. The resulting cells will not grow into a baby from whom a liver is taken. Instead, they will be convinced to become liver cells and injected into the [patient] to save her life."
Seemingly simple and elegant. Seemingly free from the debate over embryo cloning that we saw mentioned in the previous article. But the article remains vague. "Technology will exist" to manipulate the cell, we are told. But what technology? How will it work? This article leaves us with many questions remaining.
But it serves a purpose, and a very important one. It informs readers so that they may thoughtfully engage in debate, rather than protesting against cloning out of ignorance and fear. It reminds the public that science is not infallible, and that "science does not move forward by a continual advancing of knowledge. We take two steps forward, then discover we were wrong and start all over again." It reminds us that this is a technology still in the process of being fully developed and understood. We cannot demand perfection yet.

Of course, because the technology of cloning was still being developed in 2001, the issue of fitting cloning into health care had not even come up yet. We were still a long way away. But as cloning technologies become more plausible and less hypothetical, the government, Congress, and the FDA have become increasingly interested in regulating or restricting the products of these cloning technologies, as we will see in the following articles.

C. Heard