Before publicly declaring in 1997 that he had successfully cloned a sheep named Dolly, Ian Wilmut hired a PR firm. Wilmut and his colleagues suspected that the idea of cloning a mammal would spark serious ethical debate around the world, and tried to make it clear that human cloning was not the goal of their research. Dolly was cloned for purely commercial reasons to make medicines in animal milk cheaper than traditional methods would allow.
Moreover, in the paper describing the experiment, which was published in Nature, scientists avoided the words "clone" and "cloning" entirely, using the familiar and more neutral "somatic cell nucleus transplant" (SCNT). The magazine itself further requested that the use of new terms be avoided in order to avoid ethical difficulties.
But the precautions of Wilmouth and his colleagues did not stop the thunder of claims that this technology could be used to clone a person, and therefore violates several ethical principles. For example: cloned mammals were more at risk of disease and health problems; somatic cell nucleus transplants will steer scientists down a slippery slope that leads to designer babies; scientists should not "play God."
Unsurprisingly, a 1998 poll showed that society was absolutely opposed to human cloning. Many scholars believe that ethical bias prevented Wilmuth from winning the Nobel Prize.
Be that as it may, the SCNT study led to many important results. Of the most recent and interesting, one can note an article published in 2013 by Shukhrat Mitalipov and his colleagues. It describes the successful use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and SCNT technology to transfer genetic material from any non-sperm cell into a human oocyte. The main goal was to use this technology to create stem cells for a specific patient; it also allows women with mitochondrial diseases to have healthy children. How it works? From the egg of a woman with a mutation in mitochondrial DNA, a nucleus is extracted and transplanted into an egg without a nucleus of a woman with healthy mitochondria. This reconstituted oocyte is then fertilized by IVF and implanted in a woman with mitochondrial mutations. The child is born healthy. Recent research in the UK has shown that this method is safe and that human trials can begin.
But the same ethical issues raised with Dolly remained, as new ones appeared. The technology, which makes it possible to create embryos free of inherited mitochondrial disease, requires three people to donate their DNA to a child: a sperm donor, a woman with genetic mitochondrial disease, and a wife who donates healthy mitochondria. And the question is: does an embryo with more than two genetic parents violate ethical principles? In short, who are the parents?
Some ethicists believe that since the amount of mitochondrial DNA donated is less than 0.2% of the total DNA, it cannot be considered a birthright. Others point to the importance of mitochondrial DNA in embryology and say that the mDNA donor can also be considered the mother of the child.
Some believe that if this “controversial” mitochondrial replacement technology begins to make children healthy, the ethical dynamic will sharply creep in the direction of SCNT approval. In 1978, when the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, was born, fears arose that the technology would be used to create designer babies.
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Nevertheless, today more than five million babies have been born thanks to IVF, and most people support this technology. In addition, society is adopting another IVF-based technology - the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnostics to select healthy embryos for IVF. The lesson of history is clear: biotechnology has led to significant improvements in medicine, to the emergence of healthy people, and people changed their minds, despite ethical and even religious beliefs.
The passion and desire of people to have healthy children is an extremely powerful force that can overcome many ethical barriers and challenges in cloning technology.
ILYA KHEL