Brave New Britain: Tony Blair leads the free world into cloning

Nigel M. de S. Cameron

We have come full circle. Ian Wilmut, the biotech pioneer whose cloning of Dolly the sheep held the world spellbound in February of 1997, has been granted a license to clone humans. Unlike Dolly, the sole survivor of 277 attempts, Wilmut’s human embryos will never be implanted in a uterus. They will be created for the sole purpose permitted in British law: experimentation. And then, as required, they will be destroyed. Just days after President Bush in his State of the Union address declared his intention to work to ban all creation of embryos for purposes of research, and days before the UN’s legal committee convenes again to discuss a global cloning ban, it’s hard to get around the symbolism. Tony Blair wants the Brave New World to begin in Britain.

Last fall, I was in London to take part in a conference on cloning. It brought together players as diverse as Brigitte Boisillier, the Raelian scientist who claims to have cloned born babies; and Baroness Warnock, godmother of British biotech policy whose committee back in the 80s set the pace for what is happening today and, by a whisker, came down in favor of making embryos for research. In fact, the British story is one of lost opportunities. In response to Warnock’s report, a nationwide debate convulsed the parliamentary process, and a bill sponsored by the late Enoch Powell, MP, was set to win a huge majority to ban all research on human embryos – until the Thatcher government used procedural moves to derail it. A conservative leader with a moral blind spot (like her successor Tony Blair), Margaret Thatcher finally risked forcing through her own law with a maneuver unknown in the British system: by offering a free vote on the central clause of a government bill.

Discussion in the US mirrors that in the UK in important respects. Very few Americans, like very few Brits, have grasped the global dimensions of this debate. They see it as a subset of the abortion debate, and since they tend to favor at least some abortions they consider that concerns about the tiniest humans are misplaced (and always religious). They see it that way, of course, because that is the way the press serves it up; and that is the way the proponents of uncritical biotech need it to be seen. But it is a myth. The antidote lies in some simple facts:

1. If Ian Wilmut engaged in his human cloning experiments in Canada he could face five years’ jail time. If he was in France, seven years. The French and Canadian laws were passed only last year, and – since they would have shattered the way the press has presented the issues – they received zero coverage in major American media. Moreover, it is illegal in Australia, and in liberal, Scandinavian, Norway. When the Swiss were reported as voting recently in favor of “embryo stem cell research,” they also repudiated cloning as a way of getting the embryos. Needless to say, all of these countries have liberal abortion laws. In fact, in Canada the pro-life movement actually worked to defeat the legislation that led to the “therapeutic cloning” ban.

2. Cloning for research is opposed by leading environmentalists and feminists. Here in the US, iconic pro-choice feminist Judy Norsigian (of Our Bodies, Ourselves) signed the rebuttal to California’s egregious Prop. 71. And research cloning opponents include doyen of environmentalists Jeremy Rifkin and Friends of the Earth President Brent Blackwelder, joined by pro-choice, “progressive,” Christians like the United Methodist Church.

That’s why more than 60 nations across the globe have called for a convention to ban cloning, whether for research or baby-making. And it’s why Britain is out on a limb. While there are other states with pro-cloning policies (notably, China and Singapore), among western democracies the UK is nearly alone. Most important of all, the Germans, who know a thing or two about unethical science, banned cloning back in 1990 and in two recent stormy debates in the Bundestag – where there are almost no votes for cloning of any kind - called on their government to work harder for a global ban.

As Congress ponders the President’s freshly-stated determination to seek a federal ban on the manufacturing of embryos for destructive research, Americans need to consider the facts. This is not the abortion debate, it is not all about religion, and it has emerged as a unifying force that draws together men and women of principle from across the cultural and political spectrum. We shall need to make a choice: either to go with Britain into the Brave New World, or to let the German conscience be our guide.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Ph.D., is President of the Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future based at Chicago-Kent College of Law. He has represented the United States at the United Nations discussions of a convention to prohibit human cloning, but writes in his personal capacity.