One of me is probably enough

Perhaps 1997 will be remembered in a similar way, as now we have exchanged our roles from discoverers of life's secrets to initiators of life.

In February of this year, British scientists reported that they had cloned the first adult mammal, and named the cloned sheep named Dolly. This month, scientists in Oregon reported the first cloned primates, two young monkeys. Incredible successes of this magnitude inevitably bring debate within the scientific community, but few issues are capable of arousing such reaction in the public as human genetic engineering.

"If you really wanted to do [human cloning], it could be done," commented Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists responsible for Dolly. Such statements from Wilmut and others about the possibility of human cloning have created a buzz of controversy from coffee houses to laboratories to our nation's capitol. President Clinton recently banned federal funding for research leading to human cloning and asked private scientists to join in the moratorium until this ethically troublesome issue is reviewed.

With all the excitement one might begin to wonder, what is cloning? Far less disturbing than the science fiction image of hundreds of cylinders with partially developed monstrous human soldiers, current cloning techniques fall into two general categories.

The technique used to clone adult animals, such as the sheep experiment, removes the nucleus from a normal embryo and replaces it with a cell nucleus from the adult donor animal. Miraculously, the adult nucleus enters the empty egg and the new embryo begins development with the DNA instruction set from the adult animal. The embryo is then placed back into the mother's womb, and the fetus develops normally into a young copy of its mother.

The second technique might be considered the laboratory version of nature's identical twin phenomenon. Within the first three or four divisions of a newly fertilized egg, each one of the 16 or so cells is capable of independently generating a fully formed and functional organism. Thus, if one of the cells were to naturally break off from the rest, two identical organisms develop within the womb. Thus, scientists simply aid this process by breaking apart the initial cluster of embryonic cells, allowing each to mature independently into adult animals. The important difference between this and the other cloning technique is that the new organisms, though identical to each other, are unlike any previous adult animal in the same way we are different from our parents. This is the manner in which the two monkeys were cloned.

Armed with a thumbnail understanding of this scientific miracle does not make the ethical issues any easier to swallow. Proponents for this type of research argue that the wealth of information to be gained far outweighs the hazards. Truly, many exciting possibilities for curing human diseases, such as cancer, could lay within the secrets of human clone embryology. Using cloning technology, methods of insuring against genetic defects in our offspring have been proposed and tested in Great Britain. More morally dubious applications include the use of clones as "spare parts," and the possibility of "reviving" deceased organisms from their genetic material.

Thus we turn to the concept of scientific ethics, a misnomer almost as grievous as military intelligence. Ethics and morality are one of the many consequences of our cognition, seemingly unique to humans in nature. Thus, science does not possess ethics, only scientists do. Where one day we might scorn some knowledge or act, the next age brings a different interpretation and novel liberties built upon new understanding. Therefore, the question to consider is not whether we will clone humans, but when, and how we will choose to deal with it.

In our lifetimes, human genetic engineering will arrive. We are on the doorstep of completely uncharted territory as vast and as significant as the discovery of quantum mechanics at the beginning of this century. Thus, let us take note. Work directed toward unlocking the secrets of the atom thrust us before the specter of nuclear holocaust and the extinction of the human species, which only now are we escaping. This was not the consequence of nuclear energy, a phenomenon present in the cosmos from the beginning and praised every day with the rising of the sun, but an effect of human choices and attitudes at the time. I doubt the implications of genetic engineering are any less tremendous. I take comfort, though, as there is some glimmer of historical hope in human sanity for managing the unmanageable.

The very spirit of science is to praise the marvel of creation by investigating its function. Thus, It would seem inevitable that we would eventually find ourselves drawn to the mystery of our own biological existence. Discoveries, such as those that have taken place in molecular biology, do not sate the appetite, but only draw more attention to the table before us. We must realize that the worst course of action within a raging river is to oppose the flow. Science will always move forward, if we choose not to move with it, what we leave behind is our capacity to exist in its wake.

Jason Pyle is a senior majoring in engineering physics. His column, 'Critical Point,' appears every other Monday.

By Jason Pyle (columnist)
Arizona Daily Wildcat
March 24, 1997