Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Now for my two examples or cases to illustrate some of the main
ethical dangers of the new research on genetics and its clinical applica-
tions. Both are intended to highlight the importance of a social ethics
approach to genetic engineering. The first, a current venture in human
reproductive cloning, shows the inconclusiveness of a human character-
istics approach, as well as the accessibility and urgency of a social justice
one. The second, the use of international patent law by drug companies
to control profits by restricting access to lifesaving therapies, is offered
as a paradigm for understanding where genetic research and genetic engi-
neering are likely to lead in the near future. As research enters the stage
of clinical application, criteria of social justice will have to be applied in
a global context.
Cloning
In January 2001, an international consortium of fertility specialists
announced its intention to accomplish what most scientists and national
governments have forsworn, if not forbidden, up until this time: the cre-
ation, gestation, and birth of a human individual grown from the nucleus
of a single parental cell. The group, headed by the controversial Italian
Severino Antinori, who in 1994 induced pregnancy in a sixty-two-year-
old woman with the use of a donated ovum, includes an American, Panos
Zavos, cofounder of a fertility clinic in Lexington, Kentucky. While the
U.S. government has barred the use of public funds for so-called repro-
ductive cloning (intending to bring a cloned individual to birth), no such
ban exists if federal grant money is not used, and only a few states
(including California, Michigan, Louisiana, and Rhode Island) have
adopted laws barring the creation of cloned human beings.
Reproductive cloning would have appeal to couples who cannot bear
children together, but are reluctant to use sperm or eggs from a donor.
If cloning were their fertility therapy of choice, they could take the
nucleus of a cell from one partner, insert it in the enucleated egg of the
woman (or a donor), and implant it in the uterus of the woman (or a
surrogate) for gestation. In the closest parallel to sexual reproduction,
the resulting child would have only one genetic parent (the father), but
would be carried to term by the other parent (the mother). Such cloning
could be of interest not only to infertile heterosexual couples but to gay
and lesbian couples, single parents, couples seeking to replace a deceased
