Is cloning embryos to create stem cells immoral?

Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Vatican department that helps oversee the Church's position on bioethics issues, said in part on January 18, 2008 that the cloning of human embryos is the worst type of exploitation of the human being. He said that it ranks among the most morally illicit acts, ethically speaking that scientists have brought about.

He was speaking about an American firm that used cloning technology to make five human embryos, with the eventual hope of making matched stem cells for hospital patients. If verified, the team at Stemagen Corp., would be the first to prove they have cloned human beings as a source of stem cells, the master cells of the body. Embryonic stem cell research pits the promise of curing devastating diseases and saving lives against the destruction of human life at its earliest stages.

Sgreccia said the cloning research was unjustifiable. He also said it was unnecessary, given advances in similar research that bypasses the controversial use of embryos. Other teams have made stem cells they believe are similar to embryonic cells using a variety of techniques, including reprogramming ordinary skin cells into what are called induced pluripotent (capable of differentiating into one of many cell types) stem cells.

There are several types of stem cells however, embryonic stem cells, (the ones used by Stemagen Corp) made from days-old embryos, are considered the most powerful because they can give rise to all the cell types in the body.

Stemagen Corp said it used a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, which involves hollowing out an egg cell and injecting the nucleus of a cell from the donor to be copied ---- in this case, the skin cells from two men. It is the same technique used to make Dolly the sheep in 1996, the first mammal to be cloned from an adult sheep. This procedure was remarkable due to that fact that it proved that a cell taken from a specific body part could create a whole individual.

The real issue is whether or not these days-old embryos are human beings. If they are, then they are being denied an opportunity to live out their full lives as human beings. Based on that premise, I can understand why so many people would object to this kind of scientific experimentation.

It should be kept in mind however that the embryos that are used for this research are not plucked from a woman’s womb. What is plucked is an unfertilized egg. Spermatozoa are then inserted into the unfertilized egg. It is then that the embryo is created. But the living embryo remains in a test tube where it can no longer grow. In essence, it dies. The embryo is properly considered organismically dead when it has irreversibly lost the capacity for continued and integrated cellular division, growth, and differentiation.

The next stage is to insert a living skin cell into what is already a dead embryo. This is based on an analogy with organ donation: just as it is ethically acceptable to remove organs from no-longer-living developed human beings, it should be equally acceptable to remove stem cells from no-longer-living human embryos.

The moral issue that keeps raising its head is whether or not Man has the right to create an embryo for the sole purpose of creating stem cells rather than permit the embryo to continue living to its fullest, as an adult human being. I don’t believe that any answer proposed is one that will be universally accepted.

I remember many years ago, when I interviewed Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the Canadian doctor who advocated abortions; on the subject as to when life begins. When the word spermatozoa came up, he laughingly suggested that I create an organization for the protection of spermatozoa. Obviously, he was saying that life begins only when the sperm cell and the egg are as one. As I see it, as do millions of others, human life begins at the embryo stage.

That being as it is, is it morally right to create an embryo (a living entity at the very early stages of its life) for the sole purpose of permitting it to die so that it can be used to create stem cells from the dead embryo? This is not an easy question to answer.

Many of us are mindful that when conjoined twins are born, the parents and the doctors sometimes have to make decisions as to whether or not one twin should be sacrificed to save the other and if such a sacrifice is not made, both twins will die. I have yet to hear a religious body condemning such a decision.

What is balanced on this scale of life is that age-old dilemma; ‘should many human beings or even one human being benefit at the expense of another human being?’ More apt in this discussion is the question; ‘should many human beings benefit at the expense of one human being when it is merely at its embryonic stage?’

When dealing with the first question, we must keep in mind that when a human being enters the third trimester stage of its life, it is during this time that a fetus born prematurely may survive. It is at this period of its existence that we as human beings must concern ourselves about the welfare of the fetus as a human being.

However, we cannot escape the fact that at the end of the second trimester; (10th week of gestation) the fetus is making insulin and urinating. Its teeth are now formed inside the fetus's gums and the reproductive organs can be recognized, and one can distinguish the fetus as male or female and amongst other things, the brain is developing even further. Does this make the fetus at this stage in life, any less a human being? I think not.

If life at the embryonic stage is not permitted to continue soon after fertilization, it follows that such an entity hasn’t reached any semblance of being a human being as we know it.

Do we as human beings have the right prevent an entity from developing into a full grown adult human being? We have to find the answer to this very difficult question by looking at the even more difficult question as to whether a soul exists.

Bertrand Russell, a famous philosopher said in part; ‘When I was young, we all knew, or thought we knew, that a man consists of a soul and a body; that the body is in time and space, but the soul is in time only. Whether the soul survives death was a matter as to which opinions might differ, but that there is a soul was thought to be indubitable.’

Nevertheless modern science gives no indication whatever of the existence of the soul. It is a religious belief, a belief shared by billions of people present and in the past. Souls are usually considered by them to be immortal and to exist prior to the incarnation of a human being. If this is so, than it follows that if a soul occupies a human being at the embryonic stage of its existence and the embryo existence is shortened, either by scientists or by natural causes, then it is conceivable that the soul will still continue to exist after the death of the embryo. If this is so, and I believe that it is, then why should we concern ourselves that embryos at their earliest stages are used for the creation of stem cells, especially when such cells will improve the lot of millions of people word-wide?

As I see it, the Vatican is wrong in denouncing the creation of stem cells from embryos that have been permitted to die. It appears that some of those in the Vatican may not accept the belief of others that sometimes, the life of one must be sacrificed for the benefit of many.