Human clones?

Abstract

To establish a sound critical opinion on human cloning from an ethical point of view we should know exactly the scientific details encompassing the biological process, i.e. cloning, the transmission of life in mammals, in itself sexual, and artificially manipulating and altering the natural barrier in mammals, so that an asexual reproduction is achieved. It is obvious that this process is illicit, if applied to human beings; manipulation of a person’s origin, up to that point, constitutes a most serious aggression to human dignity and to the procreating character of the transmission of life. At this moment in time, when human cloning is only a most unlikely futurism, it is better to tackle this topic from the perspective of ethics of scientific knowledge, distinguishing with scientific rigor what is, and what is not, a human embryo. The term clonal zygote, or zygote obtained by nuclear transfer, will be used accepting the fact that the zygote is an individual, and this being not dependent on the process to obtain it. In fact, to talk about a new individual is not a deciding factor that his or her genetic heredity comes from haploid nuclei from a male and a female gamete, or from a diploid cell obtained from an individual; and it is not decisive the way in which the cells were obtained: through fertilization, or physical transfer of a nucleus to the cytoplasm of an oocyte. And even less the objective expected. It should be known that not always a fusion of gametes or the transfer of a nucleus from a somatic cell will necessarily give an embryo. What really matters, it is indeed decisive, is the suitability of the starting cell (or cells) to emit the genetic message initiated at the beginning, ant therefore with the capacity to develop itself as a new member of the species. The advancement of scientific knowledge has specified the biological requirements of that suitability. In nuclear transfer, for the resulting cell (some authors call it nucleocyte) to give an embryo- a somatic embryo as opposed to an embryo generated by gametes- it is necessary to reprogram the information of the nucleus: In fact, the nucleus being transferred comes from a somatic cell and it is necessary «to rejuvenate » the genetic information, so that it will be able to emit its precise message from the very beginning. This process of reprogramming is so more difficult when more complex is the species of the individual involved. That reprogramming is not a mere «further manipulation» of a zygote previously obtained; on the contrary, it is part of the constituent process of its very existence, and not a simple manipulation of the vital environment to turn it appropriate to its needs and subsistence. Without it cell division and growth, more or less chaotic, or ordered, could take place, but never the complex synchronized and harmonic growth giving rise to an organism. This is precisely the radical difference between an individual in development and a simple cell growth more or less of an embryoid type.