In a paper published online yesterday, scientists in China reported that they had successfully cloned macaques—a species of monkey commonly used in biomedical research. This announcement of the birth of the first cloned primates is another in a long line of “firsts” in the history of cloning, starting with John Gurdon’s creation of cloned frogs in 1962 and proceeding through the little remarked-on cloning of mice from embryonic stem cells in 1990 to the cloning of the celebrated Dolly the sheep in 1996—the first mammal to be cloned from cells taken from an adult.
What makes this latest announcement important is that no cloned primate has ever been born before; previously, scientists had only created cloned primate (and indeed human) embryos. Such cloned embryos were created so that they could be destroyed to produce stem cells, or to show that it was possible to do so.
The cloned monkeys whose birth was announced this week are more closely related to humans than any of the other cloned animals born in the past, and they could be a promising tool for medical research, especially on neurological diseases. Cloning would allow scientists to produce genetically identical, customizable lab animals that can be engineered to have just the traits that scientists want to study. Using cloning and other forms of genetic engineering scientists have already made hundreds of strains of mice designed to model diseases like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and now that monkeys can be cloned, scientists may be able to create similar versions of an animal that’s much more closely related to us.
Of course, a monkey isn’t a perfect model for a neurological disease: As pharmaceutical chemist Derek Lowe told science writer Sharon Begley,
Even so, there’s good reason to suspect that monkeys would be better models of human disease than the mice scientists use today.
If cloned monkeys were likely only to be useful to scientists trying to study and cure human diseases, this week’s news would be easy to celebrate. But cloned monkeys might also be a useful tool for scientists who wish to use cloning to produce human children. If, after practicing cloning monkeys for laboratory research, scientists manage to get their primate-cloning techniques to a point where they seem highly efficient and safe, it could make cloning to produce human children seem much less like science fiction and much more like a sensible way to help single people (for instance) to have babies.
But the fundamental moral objection to cloning human children is deeper than concerns about safety. Cloning would transform human procreation from a source of new and surprising human beings into a manufacturing process dedicated to satisfying narcissistic desires for self-aggrandizement and control.
To benefit from the cloning of monkeys for research we need to strictly prohibit human cloning. The case for banning human cloning has never been stronger: Scientists no longer need cloned human embryos to make patient-specific stem cells, and cloning to produce children remains one of the last taboos in American society—for now. This week’s news should spur policymakers to move quickly to prohibit the cloning of humans.
Brendan P. Foht is associate editor at The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology and Society.
