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In 1980, the Chakrabarty decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The General Electric Corp, known for its consumer appliance business, was also in the business of creating oil spills, like the PCB dump in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hudson River. They wanted to create genetically engineered bacteria that could eat up the oil. And they wanted a patent on it. The U.S. Patent Office rejected the patent, holding that living organisms were not patentable. The courts agreed with General Electric, holding in one decision that bacteria were closer to chemical substances than living things. When the Patent Office appealed to the Supreme Court, the Court found in General Electric’s favour, approving the patent in a 5- 4 decision.

This opened up the prospect of intellectual property in anything genetically modified. Not long after, biotech companies started taking out patents on mice with human genes, human cells, etc. And they realized: you could make lots of money with this.

1980 also saw the election of Ronald Reagan. Up until then, geneticists and embryologists would justify their work on disease-related genes by the potential for prenatal or pre-implantation diagnosis. Of course this implied the option for elective termination of pregnancy and other techniques that involved the destruction of human embryos. Under Reagan it became politically prudent for scientists to say maybe we can some day correct these genes right at the beginning, through genetic manipulation, rather than destroying embryos. This represented a tacit shift in the justification of biological research. Not screening, but prospective genetic engineering.

Changing Taboos

As the technology progressed taboos rapidly fell by the wayside. Through the 1980s and 90s, there was general acceptance among scientists of using human embryos left over from IVF procedures for research, but there was a reluctance to produce new embryos solely for experimental purposes. Then, in 1997, Dolly the sheep was cloned and in 1998 the production of human embryonic stem cells was announced. Using the cloning techniques, which involve putting the nucleus of a body cell into a female egg cell from which the nucleus has been removed, it is possible to make an embryo that is a genetic replica of an existing person. Such clonal embryos have potential research and medical uses. They could be used, for example, to trace the embryonic origins of a disease, or to construct tissue transplants that the body’s immune system won’t reject. But of course these procedures would involve creating new human embryos for experimental purposes.

Reproductive Autonomy?

But this fairly sudden change in what is considered acceptable should give us pause. It is important to recognize that the supposed “right” to manipulate and find uses for human embryos is entirely distinct from reproductive autonomy – the right of someone to become a parent or not, as she chooses. One can fully support the second, and indeed consider it an inalienable human right, while having grave concerns about the implications of the first for our increasingly commercialized and commodified culture.

The next taboo that fell by the wayside is that of not making a full term human clone. People have advocated using cloned embryos to make human stem cells, even though the efficacy of embryonic stem cell therapies has not been demonstrated. (Despite years of attempts, no mice have been cured of any health-impairing condition through the use of mouse embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells may be better; they’ve been used successfully in clinical trials and elsewhere.) In any case, the pressure for making a full term human clone is growing. Indeed, if stem cells from an embryonic clone of the patient are (as it is claimed) better than those from “off-the shelf ” embryos, why not bring the clone to full term so that a fully-developed kidney, or definitive bone marrow can be harvested for the patient’s use.

The resulting full-term clones, assuming it is intended to make them part of human society, rather than (as some have suggested) causing them to develop without brains so that they can be used only for spare parts, will be experimental products. Even if cloning can be made reliable in animals, transferring experimental technology from one species to another always leads to unexpected results. So any proposals to do full term cloning in humans, or germline engineering, which is modification of human embryos to pass on traits to a next generation, will violate the Nuremberg Conventions established in the aftermath of World War II. The conventions say that you can’t do experiments without voluntary consent, or with informed consent by parents or custodial relatives. In cases where the individual is being brought to term using experimental methods to primarily serve the health needs of a genetic prototype, there is clearly a deep conflict of interest and no real possibility of informed consent.

So to conclude: the slippery slope can actually be stopped without undermining reproductive autonomy. We (in the US) should adopt policies similar to those adopted in Canada, Switzerland and much of Europe. Modification of embryos is banned. The creation of human-animal chimeras is banned. Creating embryos for research is banned. But the use of IVF embryos for research is permitted. Drawing a line here is ethically and philosophically defensible and can allay social and political conflict over these powerful technologies.

Stuart A. Newman is a professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at New York Medical College, Valhalla, New York.