IN FEBRUARY 2001, after detailing a series of recent “advances” in biotechnology and genetics–genetically modified monkeys, the use of human fetal tissue in rodents, the granting of patents for “hybrid” man-animal embryos, and the harvesting of hearts, brains, and other organs from dead children in a British hospital–we editorialized, “The Future Is Now.” The moral and political questions raised by human biotechnology, we argued then, deserve a central place in American public debate. Much has happened in the fourteen months since: –In the spring of 2001, embryonic stem cells and cloning emerged as central issues in American politics. In June, the House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 265-162, a ban on all human cloning. In August, President Bush, after months of deliberation, delivered his decision about federal funding of embryonic stem cell research in a special televised address to the nation–the first of his presidency. As he put it: “We have arrived at that brave new world that seemed so distant in 1932, when Aldous Huxley wrote about human beings created in test tubes.” –In November 2001, Advanced Cell Technology created what were believed to be the first cloned human embryos. When asked whether his technique would eventually be used to clone newborn human beings, Michael West, the company’s president, replied: “I’m not an expert in ethics. . . . But, biologically, scientifically, I don’t know of any reason why that would not happen.” “For the sake of medicine,” West added, “we need to set our fears aside.” –Now, in early 2002, we read of yet another wave of biotechnological advances. The most shocking was the reported creation by Chinese scientists of cloned human embryos using human DNA and rabbit eggs. Researchers in both the United States and Japan claimed advances in artificial wombs. Advanced Cell Technology reported work on fetal stem cells–not embryonic, but fetal stem cells–taken from cows, raising the specter of such work in human beings. A company named Genetics Savings & Clone announced the cloning of a cat. Other researchers reported the cloning of rabbits “ready in time for Easter.” And renegade Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori claimed last week that one of the participants in his human cloning project is eight weeks pregnant with a human clone. The list goes on and on, but the lesson is clear: The time really is now. The moment has arrived for setting limits on–and reconsidering–the science that leads to what Francis Fukuyama calls “a posthuman future.” Do we want to go down the road of using developing human life as a resource for experiments? Do we want to transform human procreation into a form of technological manufacture? Do we want to design our descendants? How much do we want to modify the chemical and biological workings of brain and body? It is not always simple to draw lines between genetic therapy and eugenic enhancement, between scientific experimentation and exploitation, between a better human world and a new, inhuman one. But our moral sentiments, when faced with the developments of the last few years, revolt at what may soon be possible: corporate ownership of genetically modified human embryos; the production of living human clones; the use of pre-implantation genetic screening and abortion to select “better” babies; the use of human fetuses as fodder for experiments. Some lines are difficult to draw. Some are simple and clarifying. In the next few weeks, the Senate will vote on one of the most important–whether to ban human cloning. This vote will set a precedent–one way or the other, for better or worse–for our effort to confront the moral challenges posed by our biogenetic powers. The vote looks likely to be a close one, between two fundamentally different alternatives. One is the Brownback-Landrieu bill, almost identical to legislation already passed by the House. It would ban all human cloning, is supported by the president, and deserves to become law. The Kennedy-Feinstein and Harkin-Specter bills, which will probably be combined into one alternative, would allow the creation of cloned human embryos for research and destruction. The biotechnology industry and patient advocacy groups have falsely sold this research as the key to imminent cures. They have misleadingly described it in ways that obscure its connection to reproductive cloning (it is the first step down that path) and sanitize its essence (the creation and destruction of nascent human life for research purposes). Consider this new radio advertisement by the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research: “My name is Kris Gulden. I’m a former police officer and triathlete. Due to a spinal cord injury, I’m now in a wheel chair. In my dreams I still walk and run. And I wake up every morning hoping for a cure. I’m sure someone close to you–someone with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or diabetes does too. But now we have hope, thanks to a new kind of medical research, called somatic cell nuclear transfer–or SCNT. Some people call it therapeutic cloning, although it has nothing to do with copying human beings.” Of course, it is medical researchers themselves who invented the term “therapeutic cloning.” And the supposed promise of this research is precisely that it would create an embryonic copy of human patients in order to provide stem cells that the body’s immune system won’t reject, or to supply the means to model particular diseases. Apparently the “advancement of medical research” justifies falsification of the facts. Such sophistry–and the world it portends–must not be permitted to prevail. The Senate now has the opportunity to act to ban all human cloning. If it fails, where will we draw the line? How will we ever summon the will to avert the even darker nightmares that will surely follow? –William Kristol
