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Reproductive technology
Published in Frank J. Dye, Human Life Before Birth, 2019
Is human cloning on the horizon? Is the “brave new world” just around the corner? It seems that for now, human cloning is conceivable, technically very challenging, and morally of great concern. Governments are taking steps to prevent human cloning, but the future of human cloning is open.
The Dawn of GM Humans
Published in Tina Stevens, Stuart Newman, Biotech Juggernaut, 2019
As we show later in this book, the acceptance of human cloning as therapeutic strategy has opened the way for its use for reproductive purposes (though not without obfuscation in the form of terminology such as “mitochondrial transfer”). Notwithstanding therapies that eventually derived from ES cells (none of which to date employ SCNT (Lee et al., 2016)), the term “therapeutic cloning” was false advertising. The more accurate term “research cloning” was eventually adopted when the hyperbole was seen to be too much even by bioethicists generally sympathetic to the technology (Pellegrino et al., 2002). But regardless of the specific adjective used, the re-naming project was largely politically successful. It conjured for the public the illusion of a forked road, the distance widening between separate routes of research destined never to meet. It functioned ably to obscure how research undertaken in the hope of finding cures was, in fact, the very same research that enables cloning for reproduction. While not quelling the concerns of some with religious sensibilities about the sanctity of the embryo or of secular critics wary of slippery slopes, it did allay the immediate fears of those discomfited by the prospect of creating viable human clonal embryos for implantation.
Medical progress and human costs
Published in Philip Cheung, Public Trust in Medical Research?, 2018
Human cloning involves genetic engineering. Genes are manipulated in the laboratory. The chance of being successful relies heavily on the competence of the scientist as a technician since precise manual manipulation is required during the in vitro fertilisation. Damage can be caused to the cells during laboratory manipulation. If damage is caused to the cells then an abnormal potential being will be created. In which case, who would bear the moral responsibility for the malformed person if the embryo were allowed to develop to birth and beyond? How acceptable is it that the malformed potential human being (embryo), that has deliberately been created, be destroyed? Perhaps that is a different order of concern to that of destroying an embryo that is diseased or defective but naturally created. Each time some great potential advance in medicine or science comes into view some of us may say ‘this goes too far’. We appear to stand opposed to progress. But does this mean we should not speak out? Will everything always be all for the best in the end? Will the sufferings of the first patients always, as in the case of transplants, be followed by success?
Anticipatory Governance and Foresight in Regulating for Uncertainty
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2022
While the hypothesis is conceivable, Ankeny, Munsie, and Leach (2022) note there is equally good evidence to the suggest the iBlastoids could not possibly develop into an organism and the conditions needed to grow them to the primitive streak stage have not yet been defined. Even if those experiments could be achieved, the stem cell uncertainty principle dictates that a precise “determination of its developmental potential” (Askenasy and Nadir 2006, 489) will only ever be an estimated probabilistic calculation (Fagan 2013). Implanting an iBlastoid into a biological womb in an attempt to develop the structure into a functional organism might generate conclusive evidence to prove or disprove the hypothesis. However, if successful, that outcome would foreseeably amount to human cloning, which is illegal in most countries, including Australia, and morally repugnant to many.
Content development footprints for the establishment of a National Bioethics Committee: lessons from Nigeria
Published in Global Bioethics, 2021
Chitu Womehoma Princewill, Ayodele Samuel Jegede, Adefolarin Malomo, Francis Chukwuemeka Ezeonu, Abdulwahab Ademola Lawal, Omokhoa Adeleye, Christie Oby Onyia
Politics, Economics, Natural Science and Technology have biological and psycho-social drives; the natural impropriety and imbalance that frequently attend their outcomes are not easy to foresee, determine, deter or remedy, even in the best of climes. Since the 1960s, countries have sought for ways to deal with the ethical issues emerging from new technologies arising from life sciences and medicine (Brian & Cook-Deegan, 2017; Faden & Kass, 1991). In 1966, in the USA, concerns were raised about research ethics on in-vitro fertilization, human cloning and brain science (Beecher, 2001; Callahan, 2012; Lock, 1990). Before then, there were series of unethical researches by the Nazis during the world war (Shrestha, 2012; Shuster, 1997; Weindling et al., 2015). The story of the Tuskegee syphilis study in the USA was another unique unethical research carried out by the United States Department of Public Health (Ogunbure, 2011). The bid to obviate unethical research gave rise to the international ethical codes and guidelines such as the Nuremberg Code, the Belmont Principle, the Helsinki Declaration, and Council for International Organization of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) etc. Over time, with rigorous processes and efforts, bioethics has become so central that Bioethics Committee has become an important organ of the United States Government and other countries (Elgharieb, 2015; Lock, 1990). Conventionally, most President of the United State of America has established a Presidential Advisory Committee on Bioethics (Capron, 2017).
What to Expect When Expecting CRISPR Baby Number Four
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2019
Christopher Thomas Scott, Cynthia Selin
In the wake of reports that a Chinese biophysicist, He Jiankui, used a genome editing technology, CRISPR/Cas9, to modify the CCR5 gene in viable human embryos, the criticism from the international scientific and bioethics communities has been swift and unrelenting. The overwhelming conclusion is that Dr. He’s procedure was deceptive, violated Chinese law, flaunted international ethical norms, and put the babies at physical risk. It was, simply put, unethical human experimentation. Dr. He has since disappeared, raising the question whether the experiment was a hoax. The long shadow of Hwang Woo-suk—the infamous human cloning fraudster—is now cast upon the scene.