DESPITE the years of hype about cloning changing the face of medicine, no scientist in the West that we know of has yet grown a cloned human embryo to the stage where it could yield any potentially useful stem cells. Has an unknown fertility expert in China really cracked the problem (see The race for a cure)?
Until Lu Guangxiu鈥檚 research is published and scrutinised by other experts, it鈥檚 impossible to be certain. What鈥檚 clear is that in the West, especially the US, Lu鈥檚 claims make perfect ammunition for snipers on both sides of the moral divide over embryo research. Opponents of the research can now brand embryo cloning as the kind of repugnant activity that non-democratic nations dabble in. American biotech lobbyists campaigning for unfettered human embryo research can spread alarm about a communist nation surging ahead to commercialise a key medical technology.
Both views are absurdly simplistic. The reason Chinese scientists are busy planting genetically modified crops and forging ahead in stem cell research is the reason both these activities flourish in the American private sector: there are few regulations holding them back. In this sense, China鈥檚 freewheeling approach to 鈥減rogress鈥� shares more with laissez faire capitalism than Mao鈥檚 Little Red Book. And the fact that Britain has also said yes to limited human embryo cloning suggests it can hardly be a communist plot.
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Which is not to say there aren鈥檛 valid concerns about the way China is embracing other aspects of biotechnology. One is eugenics. In 1995, China passed a law forbidding couples with genetic diseases from marrying unless they agree to be sterilised or take long-term contraceptive measures. Geneticists in China are also more receptive to the idea of using genetic screening to prevent children with disorders being born.
There is no suggestion that the Chinese scientists involved in the cloning research share this attitude or are guilty of any wrongdoing. But, as reported, their claims do raise ethical questions. The team says that only 5 per cent of its cloned human embryos grow to the crucial blastocyst stage, where stem cells can be isolated. And the team appears to be claiming that it has cloned dozens of these human embryos. Taken together, this suggests the researchers have used up hundreds, perhaps thousands, of human eggs in their research to date. In the West, such numbers are unthinkable because donors are scarce.
But even if China has found a way to persuade large numbers of women to donate eggs for cloning research, this is not the space race. There is no imminent prospect of the US sliding into the biomedical dark ages if it fails to counter China鈥檚 clones with ones of its own.
Partly this is because the future value of clones to medicine remains unclear. Neither the Chinese team nor any other researchers have so far discovered how to turn ordinary embryonic stem cells, let alone ones from cloned embryos, into safe and effective treatments for human patients. Indeed, judging from American scientists鈥� early attempts to use embryonic stem cells to treat mice, it could be years before we see even the credible beginnings of such treatments. Few of the stem cells injected into the sick animals turned into the immune cells the animals lacked.
And stem-cell therapy will never be a practical proposition if it requires embryos to be cloned every time a patient needs treating. In the short term, scientists may need to carry out limited human embryo cloning, but only so they can discover how to clone tissues without creating embryos.
Where does this leave stem cells taken from adult tissues? As pro-life campaigners constantly remind us, they get round the key moral concerns. Unfortunately, this science too is at a raw and early stage. A team in Minnesota claims to have used bone marrow stem cells to repair brain damage in rats (see Under your skin). If replicated, that is promising. But long-term success with these cells is no foregone conclusion. Confusion rages over just how versatile and safe they are.
Last summer George W. Bush limited American government funding of embryonic stem cell research to studies using existing cell cultures. Later this year the US Senate is likely to vote to ban American scientists from creating any cloned human embryos and perhaps even from importing cells from such embryos. But even if this becomes law, all will not be lost for American biotech industry. American scientists will still be able to study adult stem cells and stem cells from non-cloned embryos. And there will be nothing in US law to stop American companies funding human cloning work in labs overseas and reaping the financial rewards of any patentable technologies that emerge.
Americans went to Scotland to buy up the Dolly technology. In today鈥檚 globalised marketplace China is not so very far away.
