Dolly the sheep’s arthritis is a warning on cloning

“We have no way of knowing whether this is due to cloning or not,” said Ian Wilmut, lead scientist on the team at Scotland’s Roslin Institute that created Dolly. However, arthritis in sheep usually appears years later than it has in Dolly and in other joints, usually the elbow – Dolly’s is in her knee and hip joints. “This provides one more piece of evidence that, unfortunately, the present cloning procedures are rather inefficient,” Wilmut said.

That is an understatement. Researchers have long known that clones often suffer from premature aging, as cloning employs genes gathered from mature animals. Dolly was made from a cell removed from the udder of a six-year-old ewe. Many cloned sheep, cows, pigs, and mice have been born with deformed brains, hearts, lungs, and blood vessels. Some researchers believe that all cloned animals have some abnormality, which may not be noticeable until later.

Several observers downplayed Dolly’s arthritis. “People who want to find problems with cloning will find problems,” said Randolph Wicker of the Reproductive Cloning Network in New York. “God forbid the first cloned human child catches a cold. The media crews will be there to blame it on cloning.” But many believe the news is a warning not to experiment with such technology on humans.

“Right now, among scientists, the general attitude is the safety and efficacy concerns that have arisen in animals models would argue against trying to bring human babies to term,” C. Ben Mitchell, a senior fellow of the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity and a professor at Trinity International University, told The Interim. “(Cloning pioneer) Rudolf Jaenisch of MIT has been one of the leading voices against bringing human babies to term because the result would be unbelievable carnage.”

Still, even if safety concerns were resolved, Mitchell believes that most people would still oppose human cloning. “With the general public, there’s just an intuition, what bioethicists call the ‘yuck factor.’ They couldn’t articulate good reasons for not cloning a human being. That’s the task that’s before those of us who try to provide reasoned accounts for ethical judgments.”

Such reasoning is unlikely to persuade researchers, however. “When you combine cloning technology with stem-cell research, there is the potential for producing therapies that might be useful for people who are suffering,” Mitchell said. He worries that the public is tempted by the promise of such technology and will embrace it once scientists declare it safe. “Only later will we find out what the cost in human life is of these technologies,” he warned.

Some scientists may not even wait until it appears safe. “Somewhere out there, there’s probably a maverick who will go ahead with this, no matter how many responsible people say, don’t right now,” Gilbert Meilaender of Valparaiso University, recently named to the President’s Council on Bioethics in the U.S., told The Interim.

Meilaender is correct. Physicians Severino Antinori and Panayiotis Zavos said last year they plan to create human clones for infertile couples. Antinori dismissed any moral concerns about his cloning project: “When the objective is to help men and women, then the objectives can justify everything. What is ethical is what is right for people.”

The Canadian government is now considering whether to ban the creation of embryos for research and Canadian scientists have agreed to a voluntary moratorium. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban the creation of human embryo clones and their transfer to the womb. That bill and several others are now before the Senate.

Meilaender believes we should examine what already occurs in the world of cloning. “I think that at least as great a concern right now is the enormous push in techniques to produce embryos as research subjects,” he said. “By saying we’re against cloning that’s intended to give birth to someone, we give ourselves a moral respectability that says it’s all right to clone embryos for research purposes.”