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By Barry Serafin
 Experts
Say Human Cloning Is Inevitable, But Is It Ethical?
W A
S H I N G T O N — All babies are genetically unique
— each one is a biological extension of both parents.
But
Kentucky fertility specialist Panos Zavos wants to change
all that. Zavos and an international team of doctors say
that within two year and a half years, they will produce
the world's first cloned baby. He says the procedure would
be offered only to infertile couples.
"We will clone a human for therapeutic purposes. That
is very important for people to know that," Zavos says.
"This is not just to clone anyone that wishes to do
that."
Doug
Dorner and his wife, Nancy, are interested in cloning because
cancer treatment left Doug sterile.
"I
don't see any reason why technology can't help me to have
a child," Doug says. "I think that cloning at
this point would be a good option because it would actually
be one of us."
Dorner
learned about cloning from a Web site, www.humancloning.org
The site is run by the Human Cloning Institute, which was
founded by Randolfe Wicker.
Wicker
sees cloning as a way to cheat death.
"I
will be cloned after it is safe, viable, and affordable,
and I don't think that will be terribly long from now,"
says Wicker. "I would sort of like live on through
my later-born twin."
Experts
estimate that the procedure will cost couples between $50,000
and $60,000 initially.
Critics
Question Safety
But
critics say much more research needs to be done before human
cloning is considered safe. Even the cloning of animals
like sheep, cows, pigs and mice is still far from foolproof.
For example, at Infigen, a leading animal cloning company,
the highest success rate so far is only 15 percent. That's
all right for animals, but what about people?
Bioethicist
Alta Charo says human cloning carries an unacceptable risk
of miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects.
"I
think it's unprofessional," says Charo. "I think
it's unsafe. It's unproven. It's certainly untested in humans…What
we are going to get, nobody knows, we've never done this
before."
Zavos
insists the cloning team will not go forward if it cannot
develop safe, reliable procedures. If they can't find a
way to clone safely, they'll stop altogether.
"If
by any means we cannot develop this technology, our ambitions
are not going to drive us to the level where we are going
to act irresponsibly," he says. "We're going to
close the shop and go home, and the world needs to know
that."
Supporters
and critics of human cloning do agree on some things. It
is important to understand, they say, that a clone might
look like a twin, but it would not be the exact copy many
of us envision.
"That
little baby is going to be different simply because it has
a different environment," says Wicker. "There's
going to be a different series of life experience, different
nutrition. All types of things are going to impact that
child."
For
example, clones of Michael Jordan might not be great basketball
players. Instead, they might play the violin or become mathematicians.
'The
Genie Is Out of the Bottle'
There
is also agreement among the experts that, however controversial,
attempts at human cloning are inevitable. Even the chairman
of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, which concluded
in 1997 that human cloning was unsafe and unethical, said
in 1998 that it would be "very difficult, if not impossible,
to try to stop."
Zavos
says his group is working to ensure that when human cloning
does happen, it is done properly.
"The
way I look at it, the genie is out of the bottle,"
Zavos says. "If we don't do it, somebody else will
do it and they'll do it soon, and probably in a very irresponsible
fashion."
Arguments
over ethics, risks, benefits and legality go on, but human
cloning appears to be just a matter of time.
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