The United States reacted differently to the scandal. Some advocates of cloning claimed that the incident was meaningless except for the reckless behavior of some scientists in South Korea. Daniel Perry, chairman of the Alliance for the Advancement of Medical Research, said, "Although this is an obvious setback, there are still amazing prospects in the field of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, as demonstrated by some outstanding scientists in China." Others, including members of the Seoul investigation team, believe that this incident "destroyed the foundation of science". The truth is obviously somewhere between these two extremes: the scandal never involved a few Korean scientists, but it didn't destroy the whole science unless someone foolishly equated human cloning with the whole science. More generally, this unfortunate incident has taught us three lessons: science, politics and morality. If we don't learn from it, we humans will face a dangerous situation.
The Myth and Reality of Science
As Washington post said, the first obvious conclusion is that "the much-hyped embryonic stem cell research lags behind scientists' expectations for several years. "After eight years of efforts to clone human embryos, no one in the world has succeeded in doing this. After years of preaching the so-called "therapeutic cloning"-the idea of extracting stem cells from cloned blastocysts will provide patients with their own "bioremediation elements"-no one has reached or even taken the first step to realize this medical dream.
It is obviously correct to find a researcher cheating, but in this case, Dr. Huang's research was once regarded as a successful field of human cloning for scientific purposes. If his research is false, at least there is nothing in this field now. As The New York Times pointed out, "it seems that the technology of cloning human cells, which was acquired as early as March 2004, is now found to be non-existent, forcing cloning researchers to return to the first stage."
In the past eight years, this is at least the third time that we have heard about the success of cloning human embryos to obtain stem cells. It turns out that this news is completely unfounded. In order not to convince us that South Korea is the monopolist of publishing false information in this field, it is necessary to point out that the first two false news were published by American company Advanced Cell Technology (ACT). Although ACT researchers only succeeded in developing a cloned embryo to the stage of six cells-whether they created an embryo is uncertain-it is certain that they did not get stem cells at all. But the company announced that its researchers were "the first evidence that recombinant human cells can provide transplanted tissues."
Most Americans, legislators may think that there are at least examples of animal models successfully obtaining embryonic stem cells from "therapeutic cloning". But there is little evidence in the scientific literature to support these claims. Research reports published by ACT and others are touted as showing the benefits of stem cells obtained from cloned animal embryos, but in each report, the goal of treatment is to transplant embryos into the uterus of animals, grow there to the fetal stage, and then kill the fetus to obtain more developed embryonic stem cells. Such a "fetal farm" is obviously regarded by some researchers as a new paradigm of human "therapeutic cloning". Some states have enacted laws on cloning, such as New Jersey, which allow such strange behavior on human beings. Maybe "therapeutic cloning" is not needed at all. If "productive cloning" is not carried out (which is condemned by everyone), the embryo will be placed in a woman's womb. In this case, in order to abort the fetus in the future, more developed tissues can be obtained. This is, of course, the exploitation of women by cloning, which regards women as egg factories and women as incubators for cloning human fetuses.
It has also been pointed out that the progress of obtaining embryonic stem cells from cloning has proved to be a trap of "changing the bag", that is, false reports come from the progress of cloning embryos, but there is no cloning at all. For example, in the summer of 2005, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) reported that "human nuclear transplantation of embryonic stem cells has been proved to produce new nerve tissue in animals with brain injury. However, the two articles cited in this statement clearly report the use of the existing embryonic stem cell line (ESC line) extracted from fertilized eggs-this cell line is eligible for federal funding support under the current Bush administration policy. This research is actually supported by NIH Fund, which makes it even more absurd to say that "although the United States continues to be deeply rooted in atavism, Dr. Huang and his colleagues have shown that Asia has rushed to the front". A few years ago, in July 2003, NEJM announced a new politically motivated manuscript selection policy, especially "selecting" manuscripts that promote embryonic stem cells, thus damaging its reliability in this field. We want to ensure that short-sightedness in legislation will not obscure the vision of science, "the editor wrote short-sightedly.
Generally speaking, the significance of the scam of cloning human embryonic stem cells is uncertain. In 200 1 year, Biotechnology Industry Organization (Bio) testified in Congress that cloning is basically to obtain the clinical application of ESCs, because only by cloning can we control the genome of stem cells, and when those cells are used for the purpose of regeneration one day, we can avoid the problem of immune rejection. If BIO is right at 200 1, then ESCs as a treatment method has proved unreliable, at least at that time. Because it is not yet possible to obtain embryonic stem cells from cloned human embryos. If BIO is wrong, cloning (in the words of a recent commentary) is "a flashy science, the edge of a rapidly expanding world of stem cell biology." Why not ban the bizarre abuse of human cloning now and debate other issues related to embryonic stem cell research separately?
Obviously, scientists themselves don't agree with the importance of cloning research. For example, the latest issue of NEJM comments refuted the impression that "stem cell biology became notorious because of the scandal of Hwang Woo-suk" and pointed out that cloning by somatic cell nuclear transfer "is only a secondary role in the vast field of stem cell biology". The editor of the magazine said the opposite in 2003, claiming that the House of Representatives had voted to "ban the research, use and medical treatment of embryonic stem cells" by approving the ban on human cloning. But even before Dr. Huang's research fraud was exposed, many stem cell experts expressed deep doubts about the feasibility of large-scale "therapeutic cloning". Here are some examples:
The efficiency of producing stem cell lines from embryos obtained by nuclear transfer (cloning) is minimal. You have to deal with them one by one, and the stories you deal with appear again and again, which is expensive. In other words, in order to make this treatment feasible internationally, extensive nuclear transplantation procedures can't let us achieve our goal at all. Thomas Okarma, president of Geron, a famous high-tech company engaged in cloning research, said in the Technical Review in June 2003.
"Although scientists are desperate, you may think that therapeutic cloning is at the moment when one or two diseases are about to be cured, but this is not the case. Although they are optimistic about treating diseases, almost all researchers admit that these achievements are dreams rather than reality when asked. " (The New York Times 2003 1 5th, science writer Gina Kolata said.
Although cloning (transferring SCNT by somatic cell nucleus) may theoretically solve the problem of rejection, that is, biological access, it can only solve the problem of one person at a time. The time and money spent in creating these unique cloning solutions will make it impossible for SCNT to provide practical and widely used solutions for biological proximity problems. (Ruth Fadden, John Gearhart and 18 ethicists and scientists agreed with embryonic stem cell research in the report of Hastings Center in June 5438+1October 65438+February 2003).
"I think at least three or four other options have become more attractive. In the long run, I don't understand why you agree to therapeutic cloning. Because it is very difficult to get eggs, and you have to face the problem of destroying embryos. " (Allen Tronson, an Australian stem cell researcher, said in Time magazine on July 29th, 2002.
In addition to cloning, it is not only an ethical problem, but also an insurmountable problem to obtain genetically compatible tissue fluid from embryonic stem cells for other ways of human treatment. Of course, no scientist really believes that the frozen "extra" embryos provided by reproductive centers are enough for medical research. A widely cited study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2003 estimated that in April 2002, 400,000 frozen embryos were stored in reproductive centers. However, the study also found that only 2.8% (i.e. 1 1000) may be used for research purposes. Destroying all these embryos just to get stem cells (which the author thinks is impossible) will produce at most 200 or 300 cell lines.
It is suggested that an embryo bank with genetic diversity should be established through artificial insemination, in order to provide related gene pairs that can match most patients. Two outstanding researchers said that as long as we decide "the best choice for research" (not to mention treatment), we need "maybe 1000" stem cell lines, which is four times that of China. It is also said that in order to show the genetic and ethnic diversity of the American population, the embryonic stem cell bank trying to treat any major disease must include cell lines obtained from many embryos produced only for destruction, including a disproportionate number of embryos from African-American couples and other ethnic minority couples, who account for a small proportion of the customers of reproductive centers. Robert Lanza and nadia Rosenthal said in Scientific American in 2004 that millions of embryos from reproductive centers are needed to create cell lines with sufficient genetic diversity. Does any member of Congress really want to create and destroy human embryos on such a large scale?
In short, there may be a problem in supporting the expansion of federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, but there is no retreat strategy. Of course, scientists can learn a lot about diseases from a limited number of embryonic stem cell lines, but this is not a typical way for such research to be sold to the public for political and economic support. Stem cells are sold as tissue fluid substitutes for people with physical disabilities and biological saviors for more than 1 100 million sick Americans. However, if embryonic stem cells are obtained from human clones on a large scale, it will cause huge practical and ethical problems. Similarly, it is also true to try to make embryonic stem cells "therapeutic" without cloning. No one will think that embryonic stem cells are the sacred goal of regenerative medicine. As for the research of human cloning itself, it is still possible that someone can solve this seemingly intractable technical problem and successfully make this program work. However, the prospect of making women "effective" while avoiding exploitation is very slim in our lifetime.
No more political hitchhiking
Although most researchers begin to believe that human cloning may fail in medicine, political views are another issue. The political issue of cloning has long been divorced from the facts, and now it has become more serious. After the Korean scandal, after the "progress" in the field of human cloning research in the past two years was a scam, Utah Senator orrin hatch said, "As far as I know, this may be the most promising medical care scientific research in human history." In order to gain public support and financial assistance from the government, advocates of human cloning and embryonic stem cell research have long fabricated propaganda and exaggerated promises to members of parliament and the public. Some scientists and scientific and technological organizations act like snake oil salesmen, and people (not politicians) begin to pay attention to the dream of selling "magic curative effect" all over the world.
In 2004, California witnessed a particularly cynical and shameless propaganda campaign. Researchers and venture capitalists owe the state $6 billion to fund the research. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, voters are only now beginning to realize the truth:
Last year, most California voters were publicized to accept the amazing idea that human embryonic stem cells can be used to treat incurable diseases, which prompted the 7 1 proposal to win easily in the 2004 1 1 election. It is becoming more and more clear that stem cell transplantation for diabetes, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease is still far away, and it may take decades.
Fearing strong political resistance, the main supporters issued disclaimers to reduce people's unrealistic expectations that the research will soon find a cure. In some cases, they also blame others for this expectation.
Lord Winston, a British stem cell expert, warned his colleagues that political support and enthusiasm for embryonic stem cells and cloning need to be curbed.
One of the problems is that in order to convince the public that we have to do this work, we often talk big and actually can't finish it at all. This is a real problem for scientists. I don't believe that in my lifetime, or even anyone's lifetime, embryonic stem cells can achieve our desired goals.
In this regard, Sir Winston's scientific colleagues protested that it was not the fault of scientists. Dr Stephen Minger of King's College London said, "It is true that Alzheimer's Harmo Hammer is not the best candidate for stem cell therapy, but scientists have not said that he is. This is the result of American politics promoted by nancy reagan. " But in the United States, Mrs. Reagan was supported by various scientific and patient lobby groups, who wanted public funds to support embryonic stem cell research. Include the Alberta Diabetes Research Foundation, the American Association for Reproductive Medicine and the Alzheimer's Association. These groups must be aware of the scientific opposition of ESC in treating dementia, but they just turn a blind eye. Dr. Ronald McKay, a stem cell scientist at the National Institutes of Health, explained that the difference between political information and scientific facts is, "First of all, people need a myth."
Some supporters of cloning technology point out that the Bush administration should be responsible for the fraud in South Korea. Because the US government "didn't fund and manage" such embryonic stem cell research, it claimed that outstanding bioethicists Arthur Kaplan and Glenn McGee and landmark research were conducted in other countries without security guarantee.
But every aspect of this argument is obviously wrong. Not only President Bush, President Clinton and almost all members of Congress in China have unanimously opposed the provision of funds to support special human embryo cloning for research purposes in the past 65,438+00 years. 1994 65438+On February 2, President Clinton vetoed this support by executive order. Later, Congress passed a secondment bill every year, prohibiting the provision of funds to support research that may harm or destroy human embryos. The only attempt to weaken this restriction occurred in 1996. Cloning research or other embryo production purely for research purposes may be restricted to appropriate places. Even if the main bill tries to overturn Bush's policy on embryonic stem cells, it only involves "spare" embryos made by artificial insemination. Some bills clearly state that "related research should not eventually produce human embryos."
In addition, the United States should learn from the cloning scandal, and those statements that regulate the management of cloning research ignore this fact. South Korea does have laws and regulations to prevent the worst abuse, and there are also laws that allow Birkelund supporters to write California proposal 7 1 for more independent supervision. But these regulations have no effect at all for scientists who are obsessed with their goals. There is no evidence that American scientists are more concerned or cautious about ethical guiding principles. Even after ethicists supporting cloning research in South Korea and the United States expressed concern about Dr. Huang's practice, American researchers continued to cooperate with him enthusiastically until the latest research report completed the whole scam. For example, the journal Science, which published Dr. Huang's research paper in 2005, also published a paper on ethical analysis by David Magnus and Mildred K. Cho of Stanford University, which raised the issue of consent after notification, the risk that egg donors could not directly benefit from research, and even put forward the expression "therapeutic cloning" to describe the therapeutic use for decades. Koo Young-mo, a Korean ethical furniture, even raised more specific questions in an interview with Korea Times. "Let me put forward a worst-case scenario. If some donors suffer from ovarian hyperexcitability, they will take Dr. Huang to court, and Dr. Huang will be in trouble. " However, when Dr. Huang proposed to cooperate with American researchers to provide them with cloned embryonic stem cells, researchers such as Dr. George Daley of Harvard University enthusiastically replied, "Considering that Koreans obviously have the advantage of voluntary egg donors, they have an advantage over anyone in producing embryonic stem cells." The broader political lesson of the South Korean scandal and the shameful behavior of the United States is that political leaders, patient interest groups and all citizens must stop willingly accepting the so-called "healing miracle" propaganda. We should understand the current labor cost of the project, not just the attractive future. No matter what our moral views on cloning research or destroying embryos are, if scientists and politicians continue to make flowery and high-profile remarks without factual basis, we cannot have a serious debate.
The Puzzle of "New Ethics"
Apart from politics, the most important lesson of the cloning scandal is morality.
Scientists who are committed to increasing human knowledge and improving human environment have long been tempted to "cut corners" in ethics, including protecting the morality of human research objects in order to achieve their recognized important goals. Dr. Claude Bernard, the founder of modern scientific medicine, warned in 1865:
The principle of medical surgical ethics includes never conducting experiments on people that may be harmful to others in any way, although this result may bring great benefits to science, such as the health of others.
Similarly, when Germany began to conduct various experiments in A.D. 1940, the Nuremberg Code insisted that "no experiments are allowed, and if there is a priori reason to believe that death or insurmountable injury may occur." Scientists in the United States do not always strictly abide by this moral code. Just think about the syphilis experiment at Taskey University, deliberately injecting hepatitis virus into mentally retarded children at Willoughbrook Orphanage, and conducting cold war radiation experiments on unsuspecting Americans in the 1960s and 1950s.
The recent new situation is that the protagonist of "new ethics" legalizes this abuse in theory, that is, a utilitarian algorithm, in the name of research aimed at benefiting all mankind, makes the value of individual life relative and devalues it. As pointed out in the editorial "New Ethics of Medical Care and Society" 1970 of California Medicine:
Traditional western ethics always emphasizes the intrinsic value and equal value of everyone's life, regardless of age or condition. This kind of ethics is supported by the Jewish Christian tradition and has become the basis of our laws and social norms. This traditional ethics is still obviously dominant, but there are many places that show that its core idea is being corroded and may eventually be abandoned. In the future, it is necessary or acceptable to take relative values instead of absolute values for, for example, human life.
Unfortunately, this new utilitarian view has actually become a formal ethical principle for those who try to legalize human embryo research and cloning research, both in the public and private fields.
Peter Singer of Princeton University is touted by some people as the most influential ethicist in the world. Recently, he predicted that the old ethics of respecting the sanctity of life will completely die out in 2040. If we look back, "2005 may be regarded as an unsustainable year in this position", because people realize that the ethics of sacred life prevents us from benefiting from the new breakthrough of cloning technology from South Korea. Of course, Singer is very famous because his logical consistency lies in the realization that if life is not sacred before birth, it cannot be sacred after birth.
Most advocates of embryo research are not so extremely consistent, but the meaning of their ethical reasoning is really radical. Even at the government consultation meeting that recognized embryo research, the Human Embryo Research Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC) were forced to admit that early human embryos were "life" in the face of evidence, because the evidence from embryology became more and more convincing. An article summarizing recent findings published in Nature pointed out that "it is very clear that developmental biologists will no longer regard early mammalian embryos as cells without characteristics and boundaries." These advisory groups even admit that we should respect early human life. But the conclusion is that there is no limit to the destruction of immature life in the experiment, and they use cost-benefit analysis to defend it. This respect for life is not so important in the face of the health needs of a major illness after birth.
1994 when a member of the Human Embryo Research Center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) suggested whether this institution should decide to recommend federal funds to support embryo research according to the principle of "as long as the purpose is justified, you can do whatever it takes", Professor Ronald Green, the main ethicist of this institution, quoted Joseph Fletcher, the godfather of situational ethics, as saying, "If the purpose cannot be done by means, NIH panel quoted Green as a guide to ethical methods. He wrote that the task of educated and expressive members of society is to decide which qualities of others are morally relevant according to their own enlightened self-interest. If we deny "humanity" or the moral value of too many people, we may run the risk of denying the value of ourselves or those we love. If we give it to too many people, we may deprive ourselves and others of the benefits of conducting harmful experiments on these people.
According to this reasoning, if respecting a living subject will hinder us from carrying out particularly promising research, there is sufficient reason to refuse to respect the subject's value as a human being. Then this method completely overturns the Nuremberg rules. The dignity of people who accept experiments can never stop researchers from doing research that they think is promising, because the prospect of research legally limits those objects to human society and we can use them at will. Repeated facts are the driving force of research results, or the miracle of Nobel Prize or treatment, which is likely to engulf all criticisms and values and destroy all restrictions, just like the Korean scandal. Even the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (NBAC) admitted in 1999 that "it is justified to extract stem cells from artificially fertilized embryos only if there is no other choice with fewer moral problems." But NBAC and its allies ignored the existing evidence of these other options, because stem cells from adult tissue fluid and umbilical cord blood saved thousands of lives and began to deal with dozens of different situations, but they just didn't pay due attention to these developments.
In short, once people rationalize what everyone thinks is immoral with a special medical commitment, they have a vested interest in resisting evidence that may expose the falsehood of the unique commitment. Even if Korean scientists deliberately falsify the results to deceive the public, it is justified according to the principles of new ethics. The utilitarian principle not only makes life relative, but also makes truth relative. 1970 the editorial of the same book "California medicine" cheered for the new ethics, pointing out that the "old ethics" that regarded human life as sacred and inviolable has not been completely replaced, so it is necessary (and therefore acceptable) to restore the "excuse":
Because the old ethics has not been completely replaced, it is necessary to distinguish between abortion and murder, and murder continues to be regarded as an unforgivable sin by society. The result is an amazing scientific fact that everyone knows-human life begins with pregnancy, and then continues to exist in or outside the uterus until death. It would be ridiculous to prove that abortion is not a considerable degree of semantic gymnastics needed to murder life if abortion is not often put forward under the unquestionable omen of society. It can be considered that this contradictory excuse is necessary, because the new ethics has been accepted by people, but the old ethics has not been abandoned.
Advocates of cloning put aside people's concern about human life and ignored the shameful act of creating new life just to destroy it. Even though the human embryo is life in the biological sense, it tells us that these things have no human value and must be sacrificed to help the really important patients living in the world. Ironically, patients living in the world (adult women who are exploited to provide eggs) participate in embryo research, but they become victims of this project. In any case, we should not be surprised when an ethics ignores "you shouldn't kill people" and uses the same theory to deal with "you shouldn't commit perjury" in pursuit of treatment. If the embryo's "only creature" life can be trampled on for a more precious life, the "only practical" truth can also be sacrificed for a higher progressive truth.
Although Dr. Huang's scandal itself did not destroy the foundation of science, this kind of ethics-which lured scientists including the United States-may indeed shake the foundation on which science depends. Because without absolute loyalty to truth, science is nothing.
By belittling the value of life, we learn to belittle the truth and turn science itself into meaningless things. If American embryonic stem cell scientists have not learned this important lesson, then a thoughtful ethical response must come from a wider range of social and national decision makers. This response should first completely ban human cloning and enact laws to prohibit women from being used as egg factories for scientific research or as surrogate incubators for unborn babies for organ extraction. Only by respecting human compatriots of different ages and conditions and refusing to regard them as tools to achieve our research goals can we promote the cause of human progress worthy of the name.