After Dolly is a book written by Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, the scientist who led the research group that first cloned a mammal from an adult somatic cell. Here are some quotes from the book:
“I believe in the right to protest. I believe equally that right-wing religious paranoia is slowing the quest for treatments and, as a result, will harm people and cause suffering. I find it a constant cause of frustration that, in all the public debate, the harm that can be done to future generations by neglecting a useful technology is rarely taken into account.”
“The potential of cloning to alleviate suffering – even end it for some diseases – is so great in the medium term that I believe it would be immoral not to clone human embryos for treatments. In the long term, a vast range of alternative and embryo-free ways to grow cells and tissues, perhaps even organs, may also rest on the foundations of this research.”
“I want to go even further than this and propose that scientists may one day grow cloned human embryos to term to prevent the suffering caused by hereditary disease. Doctors should be able to offer at-risk couples the opportunity to conceive with IVF methods, break down the resulting embryos into cells, correct any serious genetic defects in these cells, and then clone demonstrably healthy cells to create a new embryo that can be implanted to start a pregnancy.”
“The influence of genes is modified significantly by that of the environment. Genes are in constant dialogue with their surroundings. They are in dialogue with the rest of the cell in which they reside, which is in dialogue with other cells in the body, which in turn is in dialogue with the world at large, through education and experience.”
“Inserted genes offered a way to enhance breeds, adapt them to different environments, or alter them so that they could grow ‘humanized’ rejection-resistant organs for transplant. They could even be designed to manufacture precious drugs in their milk. One could clone from cultured cells that had been transformed genetically to make a drug as they were grown.”
“Rather than be used for efforts to ‘humanize’ pig hearts, stem cells offer a way to grow a patient’s own heart muscle to carry out repairs. I remain an enthusiastic proponent of using cloning to carry out genetic alternation more accurately and safely than ever before – for instance, to make animals resistant to disease. However, much more excitement has been generated in recent years by stem cell science.”
“Embryonic stem cells offer the potential for making not only insulin-producing cells to treat diabetes but also nerve cells to treat degenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, heart cells (called cardiomyocytes) to treat a damaged heart, and other cells to fix liver damage from hepatitis and alcohol abuse. They could be turned into twitching heart cells to test new cardiac drugs, or nerve cells to rewire a broken spinal cord – you name it.”
“In many other cases the ability to grow cells and tissue that carry no risk of rejection would offer huge advantages. Heart muscle cells derived from embryos could be used to patch a damaged area of heart tissue. This has been proved in experimental animals.”
“Of the 763,509 embryos created by IVF between 1991 and 1998 in Britain, for example, 184,000 were stored, 48,000 were used in research, and 238,000 were destroyed. Pragmatists argue that it is better to make use of this precious resource – with the informed permission of the couples concerned – rather than throw it away. They argue that this affords the blastocyst greater respect. Indeed, they say, using them in research to develop new treatments and deeper understanding of serious disease is more than morally defensible: it is morally required.”
“Many critics charge that embryo research is an affront to human dignity. But this argument seems to founder on what we actually mean by human dignity. Human beings deserve respect, but, then again, so do all living things with the ability to feel and think to some degree. Is it undignified to use one’s ingenuity to overcome infertility, to treat disease, and to reduce suffering? I don’t think so. In fact, the opposite is true. Surely cloning replacement nerve cells to repair a dementing brain is more dignified than leaving an Alzheimer’s patient to lose his memories, his friends, his home, and even control over his bowel functions.”
“To ban all cloning – both therapeutic and reproductive – is akin to a Stone Age tribe’s banning any use of fire because you can burn down your neighbor’s hut, even though it also keeps you warm and sterilizes your food.”
“Every time I hear calls for blanket curbs on genetic technology, I think of the heart patient who died waiting for a transplant as animal rights protestors championed the rights of xenograft pigs, or the mother forced to watch her son suffer because fundamentalists took legal action to prevent her from having what they call a ‘designer baby’ (a technique that relies on embryo selection, not genetic modification, as this pejorative label suggests). Abandoning a particularly ‘dangerous’ technology wholesale can kill, maim, and hurt future generations by preventing that technology from doing any good at all. Society has to weight the opportunities to help and make sure that it does not miss important new opportunities because of fear of new knowledge. We should expect to change our views and judgments in the light of new discoveries.”
“Everyone understands the wish to keep children from being born with a serious genetic disease such as Huntington’s, for which there is no treatment and whose consequences are devastating. If it becomes safe and effective to prevent this and other grave genetic disorders by use of cloning, it is hard to see how this will be ethically objectionable.”
“In a sense, designer babies are nothing new: think of the mother with three daughters who is desperate to conceive again to have a son; the career woman approaching menopause who feels she had better conceive quickly so that she can claim to have led a Full Life; the poverty-stricken who have a big family to help work the farm; and the celebrity who thinks that a baby in designer denim is this year’s must-have accessory.”
“I have faith in the vast majority of scientists, who are no different from anyone else in wanting to reduce suffering and make the world a better place.”
“It is critical that we do not allow fear of misuse of new knowledge to curb our exuberant creativity. We often take for granted what has been hard-won from previous research, and overlook the possibilities and potential of future developments that may well dwarf the attainments of the past. As much damage can be done by failing to exploit the beneficial applications of a technology as by promoting the applications of that technology which are risky or harmful.”
“Even when the technologies of nuclear transfer, genetic manipulation, and stem cells have matured, I am sure that some people will still prefer to put up with the random insults of nature than be subject to human intervention, even if it is based on careful consideration of medical issues rather than a whim. They are, of course, free to turn their backs on the benefits of new technology. But at least they will have a choice. And for me, just having the chance to decide is paramount.”
“I want to be able to change my destiny rather than be condemned to a particular fate. I want people to have new options when it comes to that most fundamental urge to bring healthy children into this world. For me the widespread use of genetic and reproductive technologies is not a step backwards into the darkness but a step forwards into the light.”
