Editorial: Ban needed on cloning of human beings

Friday, Jan. 9, 1998 | 9:53 a.m.

IN 1998, Dr. Frankenstein has a new name: Dr. Seed.

Despite universal opposition, Chicago physicist Richard Seed announced this week he will try to clone a human being.

Seed said, in interviews, that he intends to use the same methods that Scottish scientists used in 1997, when they cloned the adult sheep Dolly, the first mammal cloned.

We suppose it was only inevitable after the cloning of Dolly that someone would try to replicate the cloning of humans, even making a profit along the way.

Science does open new frontiers, once never thought possible, but Seed's suggestion is beyond the pale. Anyone who thinks Seed is rational need only review his own words, which reveal the thinking of an egomaniac.

"God made man in his own image. God intended for man to become one with God. ... Cloning and the reprogramming of DNA is the first serious step in becoming one with God," Seed told National Public Radio.

The difference, which Seed does not seem to recognize, is that he wants to play God, not actually get closer to God.

No one should infer that opposition to human cloning means opposition to scientific inquiry. "I've said many times that you can't stop science," Seed said.

What Seed conveniently omits is that his proposal is not science. Seed certainly would not argue that the tortuous "experiments" inflicted on humans by Nazi doctors during World War II constituted "science."

Seed's proposal raises more ethical questions than it answers, requiring the need for a ban on the practice.

For example, will the individuals cloned have rights, or will they merely be treated as property? The plan also raises the troubling specter of creating humans with the sole purpose of harvesting them for their organs.

Despite Seed's pronouncement that he wants to move forward, some experts question if he actually has the ability to clone. Even other scientists investigating other applications of cloning are worried by Seed's announcement.

Seed's decision "is an irresponsible and reprehensible act," Dr. Roger Pedersen, a developmental geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco, told the New York Times. "It frightens people as to what our intents might be and it undermines the benefits of this whole area of research."

President Clinton last year called for a moratorium on human cloning, following the recommendation of an ethics commission that believed it was morally unacceptable. It's time for Congress to get involved and immediately ban human cloning.