Cloning and the Nuremberg Code

By Marc Lappé

The unbridled optimism that we will clone a person has suddenly been chastened - or it should be - by new knowledge of hidden risks. In the last few weeks, animal and livestock researchers have stepped forward to reveal what has been common knowledge within embryology circles for over a decade: in all five mammals that have been "successfully" cloned, the success rate is actually dismal. Fewer than 3 percent of all implanted cloned embryos make it to term, and in some cases less than 1 in a 10 of those appear "normal." Along the way, the health of many of the female animals who have carried the clone has been compromised because of unforeseen gestational problems.

As for the "clone" itself, spontaneous miscarriages have been common along with birth defects. Completely unanticipated abnormalities in hormonal balance during fetal development have appeared and growth abnormalities including grossly oversize animals have plagued newborns as diverse as sheep and cows. Diabetes, fluid retention, imperfect arteries, and other problems of newborn physiology in clones have dogged the steps of researchers bent on perfecting this technology.

With such a spate of horror stories from the farm, one wonders why teams are so bent on proceeding with human cloning? At least two groups–one a religious group called the Raelians who believe their predecessor was himself a clone, the other promoted by two reputable scientists–appear fully prepared to proceed. Each has allegedly lined up surrogate mothers to serve as the first experimental vessels for the first cloned child.

In today's world, the idea of surrogate motherhood is clouded with memories of past abuses, or at least it should be. For some of us, the type of experimentation being contemplated provides a shudder of recognition. Didn't we go through this a half century ago with the dozens of women who "volunteered" for the Lebensborn movement in Nazi Germany? Under the guise of Nazi eugenics, literally hundreds of young Aryan women offered themselves as carriers of prospective members of the master race.

A look at the Nuremberg Code which emerged from the so-called Doctor's Trial held at Nuremberg, Germany after WWII should give us pause. The Code gave us the fundamental guidelines for human experimentation that have served as the basis for rules for human experimentation worldwide. Even today, the stipulations of Nuremberg seem apt to our headlong rush to embrace cloning. In sections 3) and 4) of the Code, the researcher is admonished to test his proposed experiment first on animals to assure its safety, and then to make certain the anticipated results justify any risks from the experimental procedure to people while avoiding "all unnecessary mental suffering and injury." Perhaps most critically, in section 2) the Nuremberg Code reminded us that no experiment should be undertaken unless it can be foreseen to "yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not be random and unnecessary in nature." From this perspective, can we justify doing the human experiments that will be needed to make cloning a reality?

Even the best take on cloning leaves serious doubts about its propriety. The preceding animal work, rather than giving us a green light, suggests we cannot predict the safe outcome of the first human experiment with anything like the certitude required for drug testing. More to the point, haven't we seen enough damage in our animal testing to rule out proceeding with today's technologies altogether?

Even if it were proven reasonably safe, do we have sufficient justification for trying it? A little thought could generate a reasonable list of candidates: one of the thousands of banana workers who has been sterilized through over-exposure to a particularly pernicious chemical; the Navaho uranium miner who cannot procreate his kind; the Kurdish, Iraqi war-victim who was gassed with mustard gas, a terrible mutagen. Ironically, no one has stepped forward to make the case for any of these people. Instead, the first candidates are self-selected from a few parents who have been so grief-stricken after the loss of a child that they mistakenly believe they can replace it, or from wealthy couples whose families are felt to be incomplete without stock carrying their "special" germ line. And it is in catering to this type of hubris that we lose sight of our prior duty to help those who have genuine reproductive damage to recover their fertility.

Before we let the case of the parents grieving a dead child or any other lurid scenario tug at our heart strings, consider four fundamental realities: 1) cloning will not guarantee a healthy child, much less a faithful recreation of the genetic makeup of the donor; 2) given the present democratic institutions in our country, no unharmed person can claim she has a right to be cloned; 3) comparable medical technology can be used to help many more persons with genuine needs–without having to clone them; and 4) we can't get there from here without some egregious violations of our moral and ethical principles.

A quick mental imaging technique will also show that most models for making a clone requires we sacrifice some other fertilized egg whose genetics was not fixed or pre-determined. Recall that virtually all cloning to date has relied on destroying the genetic prospects of a donor egg or zygote and substituting a new genetic plan. Secondly, while we are banking on the geneticists' assurances that the "genes make the man," it is highly likely that our expectations for the first clones will be dashed, even if they were successful. This is so because genes change over time, they age, acquire mutations, and generally lose their integrity to be faithfully duplicated. A clone may "pick up" where the donor left off, age wise. Or more egregiously, it may suffer horrendous birth defects incompatible with normal life as happened to a significant portion of Dolly's predecessors.

The idea that a bad clone will simply give science a black eye is not a good moral reason for holding back. No one has a right to perpetuate her own genetic makeup, no matter how unique. Moreover, the dedication of the resources needed to secure the first "successful" clone will of necessity co-opt desperately needed fertility services and force some gender-specific member of the species (a woman again) to agree to be a surrogate. Absent a reasonable model, say from non-human primates, how do we explain the risks to the first surrogate volunteers?

Given the number of false starts and failures in animal work, to replicate in the fertility clinic the success of our first mammalian clone would occupy its services for a full two years. More to the point, the first clone would require the displacement of hundreds of otherwise fertile embryos that might have been implanted in the wombs of genuinely deserving parents–like those chemically damaged from workplace exposures–and unable to bear children of their own.

And what of the initial experiments on the unborn that will inevitably fail? How do we garner an acceptable consent from parents driven by desperation to sacrifice so many? Much of the more subtle damage in animal clones or germline manipulated embryos has shown up only one or more generations after the first one was produced. Does not this in itself negate the ethics of a cloning experiment? According to the original Nuremberg Code, every experimental subject should have the right to terminate his experiment, an impossibility for the first cloned persons, short of euthanasia.

And finally, where did we in Western society get the idea that we had an inalienable right to procreate anyway? With so many adoptive children languishing in half-way houses and foster homes, the idea of investing the hundreds of thousands of dollars into a single cloning enterprise smacks of medical narcissism. To give a few wealthy clients the unique access to these exotic and critical technologies–many developed through public funds and donations–is the ultimate insult to the principles of a democratic society. We should pull back from this exercise in excess while we still can.