Prohibition of cloning human beings
Report
Doc. 7895
5 September 1997
Rapporteur: Mr Gian-Reto PLATTNER, Switzerland, Socialist Group
Summary
The reproductive cloning of humans through the use of biotechnology can today be done by embryo splitting or by the replacement of the cell nucleus. The first results in identical "one-egg" twins (or higher multiples), the second is an a-sexual reproduction technique, which has received considerable attention following the production of the now famous lamb named "Dolly" by use of a cell nucleus of an adult sheep, implanted to replace the nucleus of an egg cell.
This report argues that any intervention seeking to clone human beings should be prohibited and subjected to penal sanctions. It is suggested that the draft additional Protocol to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine be rapidly adopted in the Council of Europe on the prohibition of cloning human beings (see Doc. 7884 Rev.). This Protocol explicitly prohibits any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead ("genetically identical human being" meaning "human being sharing the same nuclear gene set").
The main reason for this is the conviction that the deliberate production of genetically identical human beings violates the dignity and integrity of human beings, both as individuals and as members of the human species. Therefore, such acts must be prohibited in accordance with Article 1 and other provisions of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine.
I. Draft opinion on the draft additional Protocol to the Convention on Human Rights
and Biomedicine, on the prohibition of cloning human beings
1. The Assembly recalls its Recommendation 1046 (1986) on the use of human embryos and foetuses for diagnostic, therapeutic, scientific, industrial and commercial purposes, in which Council of Europe member governments are called on "to forbid ... the creation of identical human beings by cloning or any other methods". This recommendation is reflected in Article 20 of the report on human artificial procreation drawn up by the Ad Hoc Committee of Experts on progress in the biomedical sciences (CAHBI, 1989), which states that "the use of techniques of artificial procreation to create identical human beings by cloning or any other method shall be prohibited".
2. The Assembly also notes, that Article 13 of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (intervention on the human genome) states that "an intervention seeking to modify the human genome may only be undertaken for preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic purposes and only if its aim is not to introduce any modification in the genome of any descendants". Thus, this Article implicitly forbids cloning of human beings.
3. Reference is also made to Article 1 of the same Convention, which states that "parties to this Convention shall protect the dignity and identity of all human beings and guarantee everyone, without discrimination, respect for their integrity and other rights and fundamental freedoms with regard to the application of biology and medicine". Since cloning violates the dignity and integrity of human beings both as individuals and as members of the human species, this Article also prohibits the cloning of human beings.
4. The Assembly has also taken note of the European Council Declaration on banning the cloning of human beings, of the resolution of the European Parliament on cloning, of the USA proposal for a Cloning Prohibition Act of 1997, of Unesco's universal declaration on the human genome and human rights, and of the resolution of the World Health Assembly on cloning in human reproduction. All these texts take a strong stand against the cloning of human beings.
5. The Assembly welcomes the rapid reaction by the Committee of Ministers to the public uproar caused by the production of the cloned sheep "Dolly", mandating the Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI) in May 1997 to give an opinion on the cloning of humans.
6. The Assembly appreciates the rapid response of the CDBI, which in June 1997 presented its opinion on human cloning to the Committee of Ministers. It takes note that the CDBI agreed on specific binding provisions to be adopted within the Council of Europe to prohibit any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead ("genetically identical human beings" meaning "human beings sharing the same nuclear gene set"). It is further noted that the CDBI agreed on the elaboration of an additional Protocol to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine as the best way to adopt such provisions.
7. The Assembly welcomes the Committee of Ministers' decision at its meeting in July 1997 to seek the opinion of the Parliamentary Assembly on the draft additional Protocol to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine on the prohibition of cloning human beings.
8. Considering all these aspects, the Assembly recommends that the Committee of Ministers:
II. Draft order on research and the cloning of human beings
1. The cloning of a lamb and other animals, the possibility of cloning human beings, and related research work have recently been the subject of much public attention.
2. The Assembly in its Opinion No. ... (1997) has supported the principle that any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead, ("genetically identical human beings" meaning "human beings sharing the same nuclear gene set") should be prohibited.
3. The Assembly and the European Parliament have also called for an explicit worldwide ban on the cloning of human beings.
4. The Assembly is of the opinion that work likely to lead to the cloning of humans should not be carried out.
5. Consequently, the Assembly asks its Committee on Science and Technology to organise, in close association with parliaments of observer states and in cooperation with the European Parliament and the European Science Foundation, a debate on the attitude of the research community towards research work likely to lead to the cloning of humans and to interventions seeking to clone humans, with a view to stimulating initiatives by the research community effectively preventing such research and interventions, in line with the spirit of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine and its draft additional Protocol on the prohibition of cloning human beings.
III. Explanatory memorandum by Mr Plattner
I. Introduction
1. The announcement made on February 24, 1997 that Dr. Wilmut of the Roslin Institute in Scotland had succeeded in producing a sheep cloned from an adult somatic (i.e. non reproductive) cell made headlines worldwide. The development immediately led to a discussion of the possibilities of repeating such experiments with humans.
2. In your Rapporteur's own country, Switzerland, a sect called the "Raelian Movement" is offering (on the Internet) the possibility for parents to clone their children for some three hundred thousand Swiss Francs. The sect claims to have created a separate company, "Valiant Venture Limited", in the Bahamas to perform the cloning and to preserve cells from living children, which could later be cloned, for example, if they should die prematurely.
3. The research on cloning has of course further aspects, such as the use of cloning techniques in plant and/or animal breeding. These issues are not treated here. As for the cloning of human cells, three situations have to be distinguished:
4. Whereas the first procedure is ethically fully acceptable, the second does need much thought and further evaluation. It will be dealt with in the additional Protocol to the Convention on Human rights and Biomedicine on embryo protection, which the Committee of Ministers has asked the CDBI to work out. The third procedure is the subject of this report. It is ethically and morally unacceptable to most people. The report also makes a plea for a broader debate with the scientific community on the ethical implications of biotechnological research that can lead to the cloning of humans.
5. The documents prepared by the CDBI (Steering Committee on Bioethics), and the discussion in the CDBI on 17-19 June 1997, to which I was invited, have been particularly helpful for the drawing up of the present report.
6. It is important that the work with the additional Protocol on embryo protection should progress as rapidly as possible, and it should not be delayed by any lack of secretarial resources - secretarial "bottle-necks". Your rapporteur is of the opinion that this unfortunately is the case. The Committee of Ministers should therefore be urged to strengthen the secretariat working with the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine and its additional Protocols.
II. The science of cloning
7. Cloning is a process by which genetically identical organisms may be produced.Since genes may be mutated or lost during the development of the organism, absolute genetic identity will, in fact, never be achieved.
8. The cloning of a human being from the "old" cells of an adult individual would in all likelihood lead at best to a close genetic relationship, at the worst to an embryo plagued with genetic defects.
9. Cloning may be achieved by the division of a single embryo - as happens naturally at low incidence with humans, leading to identical twins - in which case both the nuclear genes and the small number of mitochondrial genes are identical. Or it may involve nuclear transfer, i.e. the transfer of a foreign cell nucleus into a reproductive cell, in which case only the nuclear genes would be identical. Other methods or a mixture of them may be conceived in the future. In this report, "genetically identical" is taken to mean "sharing the same nuclear gene set".
10. A-sexual reproduction (or cloning) produces genetically identical progeny. This type of reproduction exists naturally in certain simple organisms, but in almost all species, evolution has abandoned this concept, since it produces far too little diversity, the main agent of evolutionary development to higher life-forms. In sexual reproduction the off-spring show considerable genetic diversity (except for identical "one-egg" twins or higher multiples) due to the random nature of the combination of male and female genes.
11. Cloning has long been used in plant breeding, and cloning by embryonic nuclear transfer has also been used in breeding various mammalian species (mice, rabbit, sheep, cattle). Recent research has opened the way for the use of cell cultures from embryos as well as from mammary tissue (adult nuclear transfer). This was the case with the lamb "Dolly" produced at the Roslin Institute in Scotland (after 277 unsuccessful experiments!).
12. Biotechnology is used to increase the number of off-spring in animal breeding. There is no evidence to suggest that higher multiples could be developed for humans.
III. Human implications
13. In considering human implications, it is important to distinguish between nuclear replacement as a means of cloning, and nuclear replacement as a therapeutic measure, for example to avoid the very serious consequences of mitochondrial diseases.
14. Identical "one-egg" twins illustrate perfectly well that genetically identical individuals are far from identical human beings. They can differ both physically and in terms of personality. Individuals cloned from an adult cell could be even more different from the donor, since they would have different mitochondrial populations, they would be different in age, they would also have had a different environment, before and after birth, and a different upbringing. Their aging, disease pattern, etc.. are of course not known, but the risk of genetic defects could be high. A second Einstein, cloned from the adult body of the famous scientist, would probably have been an unhealthy person and most certainly unable to understand the laws of general relativity, even less to discover them!
15. Whatever the assumed merits of reproduction by cloning - and I doubt there would be many - , there is widespread agreement that it would be contrary to the principle that every human being has his or her unique nature. It would also allow for eugenics, i.e. a preselection of genetic make-up, and it would completely change the filiation system. Individuals born by cloning would be both the twin and the descendant of another human being. As for the coexistence, in the same population, of people born through procreation by two parents and people chromosomically derived from a single individual through a-sexual reproduction, it would pose inextricable problems of civil identity, while also, no doubt, generating the incalculable risk of new forms of discrimination.
16. For these and many other reasons, I think that the reproductive cloning of human beings is fundamentally unacceptable and incompatible with our understanding of individual human rights, as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and explicitly expressed with regard to biology and medicine in Article 1 of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. The cloning of human beings should explicitly be prohibited.
IV. Earlier work of the Parliamentary Assembly
17. Already in its Recommendation 934 (1982) on genetic engineering, the Assembly recommend to the Committee of Ministers to
"... provide for explicit recognition in the European Convention on Human Rights of the right to a genetic inheritance which has not been artificially interfered with, except in accordance with certain principles which are recognised as being fully compatible with respect for human rights (as, for example, in the field of therapeutic applications)."
18. In its Recommendation 1046 (1986) on the use of human embryos and foetuses for diagnostic, therapeutic, scientific, industrial and commercial purposes, the Assembly recommended
"to forbid ... the creation of identical human beings by cloning or any other method, whether for race selection purposes or not."
19. The Assembly has also adopted Recommendation 1100 (1989) on the use of human embryos and foetuses in scientific research. In addition, it initiated and closely followed the work leading up to the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine.
20. Finally, the Assembly's Committee on Science and Technology, as recently as March 1997, adopted a position on the cloning of human beings, asking that any intervention seeking to clone human beings be forbidden. This position was sent to the Committee of Ministers and forwarded to the CDBI.
V. The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine
21. The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine was adopted by the Committee of Ministers in the autumn of 1996 and opened for signature in April 1997. So far, 22 states have signed it and it is expected that some five additional states will sign during 1997. When five states will have ratified the Convention, it will enter into force. This can be expected in the course of 1998.
22. Article 1 of the Convention states that "parties to this Convention shall protect the dignity and identity of all human beings and guarantee everyone, without discrimination, respect for their integrity and other rights and fundamental freedoms with regard to the application of biology and medicine". Since cloning violates the dignity and integrity of human beings both as individuals and as members of the human species, already this Article also prohibits the cloning of human beings.
23. Article 13 of the Convention ("intervention on the human genome") states that "an intervention seeking to modify the human genome may only be undertaken for preventive, diagnostic or therapeutic purposes and only if its aim is not to introduce any modification in the genome of any descendants". Thus, this Article implicitly forbids cloning of human beings and also any intervention seeking to clone human beings with an artificially implanted or differentiated nuclear gene set.
24. These two citations from the text of the Convention show, that the cloning of human beings should already now be considered to be at the very edge of legality, even though the Convention will formally enter into force only later. Very clear, furthermore, is the general rejection of human cloning by the peoples of Europe as represented in the Council of Europe. Nobody can doubt the firm will of Europeans to achieve a formal prohibition of human cloning.
25. The fastest way to a formal prohibition of human cloning is to adopt an additional Protocol to the Convention, as proposed by the CDBI. Other possibilities would be to include an appropriate article in the Protocol on the Protection of the Human Embryo or to add an article to the Convention itself. The first procedure would be time consuming, the second would look like a simple remedy to a deficiency of the original text of the Convention. Your Rapporteur fully supports the CDBI's proposed solution.
26. It seems important that education and information in the field of ethics and the biotechnological applications of cloning be considerably strengthened, so that both the general public and the experts are fully aware of the ethical, moral and legal implications of this technique. Therefore I propose an order, asking the Committee on Science and Technology
"to organise, in close association with parliaments of observer states and in cooperation with the European Parliament and the European Science Foundation, a debate on the attitude of the research community towards research likely to lead to the cloning of humans and to interventions seeking to clone humans, with a view to stimulating initiatives by the research community effectively preventing such research and interventions, in line with the spirit of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine and its draft additional Protocol on the prohibition of the cloning of human beings."
Such a debate is timely. It will receive support from all those institutions which have already expressed their concern with regard to human cloning. Its results will help to lead a rational debate with and among the general public, convincing lay people that the danger of unethical or outright perilous applications of biotechnology, while always present, can be reasonably controlled by a rational society, so that its future benefits can be reaped without fear.
Reporting committee: Committee on Science and Technology.
Budgetary implications for the Assembly: to be covered within the appropriations available to the Assembly for the organisation of conferences.
Reference to committee: Doc. 7884 rev. and Reference No ...
Draft opinion adopted by the committee on 3 September 1997 with one abstention.
Draft order adopted by the committee on 3 September 1997 with two abstentions.
Members of the committee: MM. Melnikov (Chairman), Tiuri, Mrs Terborg, MM Birraux (Vice-Chairpersons), About, Bartodziej, Bauer, Beaufays, Berceanu, Biga-Friganovic, Bogar, Brunhart, Caccia (Alternate: Plattner), Cherep (Alternate: Pasko), Cherribi, Chornovil (Alternate: Yablonsky), Cioni (Alternate: Olivo), Connolly, Cunliffe, Fernandez Aguilar, Frey, Hadjdemetriou, Ivanov, Janecek, Johansson, Mrs Karlsson, MM Kitov, K�lahli, Lambergs, Leers, Lekberg, Lenzer, Liiv, Lorenzi, Maass, Melcak, Mozgan, Nistad, Niza, Olrich, Onaindia, Pawlak, Petersen, Prokes, Prusi, Raskinis, Rokos, Roseta, Ryabov, Steolea, Szalay, Theis, Sir Donald Thompson, MM. Jack Thompson, Turini (Alternate: Speroni), Vella, Weyts, Y�r�r, Mrs Zissi.
N.B. The names of those members who took part in the vote are printed in italics.
Secretaries of the committee: Mr Lervik, Mr Torcatoriu.