President Clinton earlier this week endorsed his National Bioethics Advisory Commission’s recommendation to create federal laws that would ban scientists from attempting to clone humans and at least one UCSF researcher says it may result in unintended negative effects.

The recommendation says scientists should be allowed to conduct research on duplicates of human embryos, but that they should be prohibited from implanting the embryos into a woman’s womb to clone people. Though a moratorium on using federal funds to clone humans already exists, the commission seeks an extension of that prohibition to include restrictions on human embryo research conducted in the private sector.

“I think it’s a bad precedent,” says Roger Pedersen, a professor in the ob/gyn department’s reproductive genetics unit. Although not in favor of human cloning, Pedersen fears the introduction by Congress of far more vague — and ultimately restrictive — laws than the well-informed bioethics commission had envisioned. This could end up stifling potential life-enhancing research. For instance, nuclear transfer research could one day lead to a method to reprogram pancreatic cells to help treat diabetes, he says.

What’s worse is the unnecessary public apprehension caused by “legitimizing” human cloning, which, Pedersen says, is “totally hypothetical.”

“It would be like banning UFOs from landing around the White House,” Pedersen says. The scientific technique under scrutiny, which was patented earlier this year by Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, involved removing the nucleus of an unfertilized egg and substituting the nucleus of a cell taken from the udder of an adult sheep. Once the egg was ‘fertilized’ by the donor cell, the growing embryo was implanted into a surrogate ewe, which later gave birth to Dolly, the world’s first mammal ever to be cloned from the DNA of an adult cell.

“Professional and scientific societies should make clear that any attempt to create a child... would at this time be an irresponsible, unethical and unprofessional act,” the commission said in its report. The commission says the ban should be upheld for three to five years to allow for more discussion of the legal, ethical and scientific ramifications of this potential Brave New World.

Recent polls indicate that 90 percent of Americans support a ban on cloning humans. But a portion of those who do not support the ban are likely to include families faced with infertility or other pregnancy difficulties who see potential in using the technique in combination with in vitro fertilization.

IVF physicians who had been asked for input by the bioethics commission did not respond, according to Bernard Lo, director of medical ethics at UCSF and a member of the President’s commission.

“Human cloning flies in the face of deeply held beliefs of family,” Lo says.

Doctors abroad appear to concur with US bioethicists. The World Medical Association last month issued a statement urging researchers to “abstain voluntarily from participating in the cloning of human beings until the scientific, ethical, and legal issues have been fully considered.”

According to a law professor who sits on the commission, the ban on human cloning represents the first instance of a field of medical research being prohibited by federal law. Pedersen would prefer that scientists voluntarily agree to a moratorium as opposed to heading down what he believes is the “slippery slope of legislation.”

By Brad Foss

1st appeared 6/11/97