Eva would be almost 22 years old. So far so good. But does Eve really exist? Her birth was announced by Brigitte Boisselier at a press conference on December 27, 2002. She is the first cloned girl, isn’t it incredible? Well yes. But we are not free from the scandal and the comments and condemnation of science and genetics, which had little to do with Boisselier and Clonaid, the Bahamas company specialized in human cloning (or rather, the company self-certified as specialized in human cloning ). The site web He goes on to say that after Eve, many people have had children using their cloning services. I wonder if anyone really believed it.
That it was a lie was easy to see, even without the further details’moonbat‘: a group of ufologists, known as the Raëlians, who look like they came out of Star Trek and with padded shoulder pads, and an aunt who has never published anything about cloning or provided any evidence of a supposed birth by cloning, who claim to have genetically replicated a human being. That is, they have taken an already differentiated cell from a donor (from the skin or any part of the body), they have inserted its nucleus into an oocyte – from which its nucleus with the pertinent genetic information had been extracted – and then they have used a pregnant woman to give birth to a copy genetically identical to the donor (when, of course, we are all the result of two DNAs, that of our parents).
This story was recently told in a docuseries, Raël: the prophet of the extraterrestrials. The third episode is about Boisselier and the imaginary Eve. Do you want to have a cloned child? You need two hundred thousand dollars and a lot, a lot of gullibility. Not only in Boisselier’s technical skills, but also in the identification between cloning and a kind of eternal life or reincarnation. Because cloning someone who has died will not bring them back to life. It seems absurd to have to say this, but often behind the demand for cloning is precisely this idea of bringing back life to someone who has died – this also applies to dogs or cats, not to mention a child or a human being who we have loved. And everyone spends the money as they want, of course, but in the best case the result will be a genetic copy of the dead dog or cat and, of course, not the loved one brought from the afterlife. And maybe you would do well to reread Pet Semataryby Stephen King, wanting to remain in the field of literature.
Dolly the Sheep
Eva would be born six years after Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal. Almost thirty years ago, Ian Wilmut and his team of researchers at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh had taken a cell from the mammary gland of an adult sheep, removed the nucleus and replaced it with that of a cell from another sheep, another sheep and The embryo was then transferred to another sheep (a sheep surrogate with the embryo created from a donor gamete but bypassing the male gamete). Dolly had the same DNA as the sheep from which the differentiated somatic cell had been taken. It was February 22, 1997 and Dolly’s birth is comparable to the landing on the moon or the discovery of penicillin.
Since then the technique has improved and many other non-human animals have been cloned: dogs, cats, mouflons, bulls, rabbits, mice, horses. Breeding or endangered animals. And then the monkeys, which probably make more of an impression than rodents and sheep and bring us back to the terrifying question: is it possible to clone a human being and when will it happen?
For now, it seems like a distant prospect, because there are too many questions and too many risks: apart from the numerous failed attempts (from the cell taken at birth), there are the possible important genetic and developmental anomalies, the doubts of premature aging ( are you born as old as the donor?) and a higher mortality rate. The possible damages continue to be many and serious, and the transition from non-human animals to humans would be unjustifiable today. And, who knows, maybe it will be forever. But since the boundaries between science fiction and science often evaporate so suddenly, it is good to try to answer them rationally and even before anything is really possible. Because many of the questions and fears around reproductive cloning refer to other techniques and other possibilities.
What does the law say?
Article 13 of Law 40 of 2004 prohibits “cloning operations by nuclear transfer or early division of embryos or ectogenesis for both procreative and research purposes.” The law on reproductive techniques also prohibits experimentation with human embryos, their production for research purposes and even “the fertilization of a human gamete with a gamete of a different species.” It is not clear why it allows reproductive techniques in general, given that even the production of embryos for reproductive purposes condemns them to death in many cases. Therefore, if the premise is to protect embryos, Law 40 fails in its intention and prohibits without explaining the difference between something that I can do and something else that is prohibited.
On the other hand, in many other cases the reasons for the bans are fanciful and somewhat fictitious. In the case of reproductive cloning, it would be enough to say that it is still not safe enough and that the risks are so high that they outweigh the possible benefits and the freedom to resort to it (freedom that should be the premise and whose restriction we should justify). A 1997 bill summarizes some of these somewhat funny reasons and is perfect for approaching perhaps the most interesting aspect: the more or less absolute moral condemnation of reproductive cloning.
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After a man in Montana illegally cloned and bred an endangered species of giant sheep, government agencies now must contend with illicit sheep offspring.
Some reasons for the ban would be: the destruction of the right to genetic identity, the inviolability of human individuality and the very concept of human personality (including); the cloning of the optimal human; the totalitarian programming and reproduction of human beings in series,” all superhuman or all servile, all physically strong but stupid or all superintelligent (through, for example, the transformation of the hibernated bodies of especially valuable dead people into inexhaustible banks of nuclei for cloning )”. Maybe they have read too many fantasy books or not enough. Shortly after, perhaps the summary of almost all these irrational condemnations and anathemas appears: “the instinctive moral response, contrary to the practice of human cloning, thus becomes the norm.”
The moral condemnation
When Louise Brown was born in 1978, it seemed like the world was ending. The reactions and condemnations at that time for the first child born through reproductive techniques are more or less what we can hear or read today against surrogacy or reproductive cloning. Over the years, this way of being born has become familiar and reproductive techniques, especially the less extreme ones, are considered morally acceptable. The Italian law (again Law 40) in its original version also prohibited heterologousness, that is, the use of another person’s gametes in case one’s own were damaged or absent. So let’s imagine whether the debate over reproductive cloning can be rational. Fear of technology, mastery of reproduction and an instinctive distrust of everything new often lead to unfocused consequences and meaningless bans. Sometimes carelessness and ignorance are added.
If we were certain that being born like Dolly was safe, that is, if we could eliminate the risks, would it still make sense to consider reproductive cloning immoral? And why? Could we not consider it a reproductive technique?
#revive #human #cloning #debate
