By Dean Rahman
In the United States, and throughout the world exists an increasingly severe dearth in donor organs available to those who are ailing because their own organs are damaged or defective. In this country alone, approximately 50,000 patients register as needing donor organs. The process of finding the suitable organ for more than a small proportion of these individuals is impossible. This is because the biology of organ transplantation is very complex--requiring many biological characteristics of the donor and the recipient to be the same. Otherwise, the bodies of the patients would reject the donor organs. Organ donor networks have to use tissue matches to determine the compatibility of the donor organs that scarcely become available to the patients in need of the specific organs. As a result, the actual availability of an organ for a specific patient is rare making treatment unlikely despite the existence of sufficiently advanced transplant technology. The compatibility needs of the body are so great that even the small proportion of patients who are fortunate enough to receive successful transplants need to take a barrage of anti-rejection medication for periods of time often enduring up to the rest of the patient’s life. In general, even less compatible is the biology of humans with the biology of other animal species such that organs transplanted from animals are immediately rejected by human bodies.
The biotechnology industry has come up with the seemingly perfect solution to this complex obstacle: by altering the genetics of animals, for example pigs, it is possible to make their organs so that human bodies do not reject them--thus they can be used in transplants. In this procedure, human genes that code for surface proteins i.e. antigens can be distinguished and isolated from the other genes in the human genome by the genetic engineering process of screening the human genome library. Then the isolated genes are introduced into the cells of the pig (or other animals and grown--creating cloned animals from these cells. The cloned pigs are transgenic such that their organs are coated with surface antigens that are the same as those which coat human organs. Therefore the organs are recognized as human organs by the human body and can be transplanted much more effectively.
This approach can be used to solve the serious problem of shortage in supply of organs for patients who are otherwise left to die because their ailing organs cannot be treated. However, the genetically altered animals have to be farmed on a large scale in order to address the shortage problem which leads eventually to their being killed for their organs. Even though this is already done to them extensively for their meat, this raises many ethical and moral concerns about the rights of the animals.
In the course of deciding whether or not cloning, farming and ultimately slaughtering animals for their organs is "right or wrong," it is important to objectively compare the reasons in favour of and against such procedures before choosing a standpoint. Unfortunately, in society, most groups and individuals choose their standpoints first and based solely on their reflexive instincts or the doctrine to which they must conform and on which they become obstinately set. Only then do they look, often fanatically so, for arguments to support their instinct or agenda in the frenzied debate they get locked in.
This paper is an attempt at the former: to draw a conclusion after a careful and objective analysis of whether or not the procedure is morally and ethically acceptable and if it is the same or different from farming animals for their meat.
Some of the arguments provided henceforth may seem to contradict each other while providing reason for the same conclusion. But as already mentioned, the point is to investigate the whole gamut of possible arguments, not just to provide a narrow set of congruent arguments which only serve a single pre-selected agenda.
Many of the prominent groups who are outspoken on the topic are extensively ignorant to the way in which nature really works or conveniently choose to ignore the facts that do not serve their pre-empted feelings well. For instance, animal rights groups revolve around the notion that exploiting animals for meat, clothing or scientific research, not to mention for their organs, is "taking life." What they do not realize is that plants are also living things. So vegetarianism, the scientific research done extensively on plants for medicine and other purposes encroach upon their normal growth and life processes amounting to the same "taking of life" and violation of rights suffered by the poor animals. The hypocrisy of this philosophy is deep seated as its proponents fail to recognize the unity of all life. Life forms outside of the animal kingdom provide much of the "meat" for biological research which even include daunting process of…cloning. The fact that humans, like all other living organisms, must depend on other living organisms for sustenance (or "take lives" to live) is inescapable. Therefore to reject a process of harvesting animals which leads to a more immediate and direct saving of human lives than ever before would be preposterous--especially while research at the expense of other living things is allowed to carry on because of some groups' stratified sense of morality. Another such group is the religious right. It was just after scientist Ian Wilmut succeeded in cloning a sheep in Scotland that they began ardent protest. Wilmut exposed the widespread benefits of cloning applications. Just one of them is the cloning of sheep from transgenic cells so that the appropriate genes are expressed in the sheep's mammaries to make possible the unlimited production of the otherwise difficult to obtain protein alpha-1antitrypsin--crucial to the treatment of cystic fibrosis (1). In response, Donald Bruce, director of the Church of Scotland, harped that "To clone is to reduce living organisms to a narrow blueprint, where God through evolution seems to have made a point of doing the opposite." (2). This from a group that has been traditionally known to vehemently combat the concept of evolution of all living things (because it disproved their scripture on the beginning of mankind). It took forever to sell them on the readily and rapidly accepted reasonability of Darwinism and now they use it in their argument because it serves their political agenda. This alone is reason enough to not take this group seriously. They will probably be using the benefits of cloning in their arguments against the next offensive step up in biological science. Furthermore, any debate on nature and science should really leave out any arguments involving God. The inherent problem with such arguments is that God is nowhere to be found in nature itself (let alone be attributable for evolution) but exists rather in concept1.
Another official comment made by the Church of Scotland in response to cloning was "nature is not ours to do exactly what we like with it" (2) demonstrating further, their ignorance towards the unity of nature. The very fact that cloning can be done incorporates it into nature--no different from the phenomenon of wind (land and sea breeze) which can be harvested to power wind mills or nuclear energy which can be used to generate electrical power. Prohibiting cloning because it "tampers with nature" should not be the goal. Rather, as with all things, prohibition should be sought against any harmful or destructive applications (such as nuclear weapons in the case of nuclear energy). And lastly, since church and state have been separated for a couple of centuries now in the western world2, the opinions of the church really shouldn't influence any government regulations including any such made on cloning of animals. Here is some consolation, though, for the Church of Scotland who have said "humans are allowed to use animals, but are also responsible for protecting them." Cloning of transgenic animals can not only save human lives by providing the badly needed organs for transplant, it can also be used to save other animals. For example, cloned mice have been produced which are immune to hepatitis, a rapidly spreading malevolence which annihilates entire mouse colonies (3). Also, cloning in general can protect endangered species from extinction.
There are however, vegetarians who choose their dietary lifestyle not out of religious affiliation (as do some Brahmins and Buddhists) or out of some moral allegiance to a selected group of living things (such as the animal rights activists) but because eating meat is unhealthy and wasteful3. Their reasoning has been widely substantiated by science. Both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the American Dietetic Association have endorsed vegetarian diets. Studies have also shown that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than meat-eaters and that meat-eaters are almost twice as likely to die of heart disease, 60 percent more likely to die of cancer and 30 percent more likely to die of other diseases. The consumption of meat and dairy products has been conclusively linked with diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, clogged arteries, obesity, asthma, and impotence as well (4). Meat is also an extremely low yield product. So much of the grain produced is fed to animals (cattle) in order to grow them for consumption that universal vegetarianism would result in the production of enough food to feed the entire world. In the U.S., animals are fed more than 80 percent of the corn grown and more than 95 percent of the oats. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--more than the entire human population on Earth (4). Vegetarianism is also environmentally more sound. Whether it's water use or pollution, soil use or erosion, resource use or air pollution, raising animals for food is a prime contributor to the problem. In fact, raising animals for food requires more water than all other uses combined, causes more water pollution than any other source, and is responsible for 85 percent of U.S. soil erosion thus far (5). The point to all of this information on logical vegetarianism is that farming and killing animals for their meat is not at all necessary and is done despite the existence of a better alternative. However, farming transgenic animals and killing them for their organs is the only resort to solving problem of organ shortage in order to save all of the people in need of organ transplants (3). Therefore the answer to the question of whether the two are the same is absolutely not. Farming animals for organs is far more justifiable and absolutely necessary.
All of the arguments that have been presented in favour of cloning have been rather convenient and would be suitable for intellectual debate. However, the truth is, in reality, even if cloning and growing transgenic animals for their organs were some hideous crime against animal life as a whole4, it would still be done because the bottom line is human lives would be saved. Allowing people to die with such resources in existence could never be reconcilable with morality and governments would be sued if they tried to prevent the procedure. Furthermore, this procedure does indeed not have an effect on the society at large but only upon the 50,000 people who are saved and their families and friends. Society at large would never go on an animal cloning orgy--lead by the evil scientists themselves--in order to sabotage the bio-diversity of animals so that they are subjected to the greater susceptibility to sickness and other unforeseeable problems that Keay Davidson writes about (6).
1. "Brave New World", Scottish Sheep Shocker! http://whyfiles.news.wisc.edu:80/034clone/ practical.html, (7 March, 1997).
2. "Should We Clone Animals?" Society, Religion and Technology Project, http://webzone1.co.uk/www/srtproject/cloning.htm, (7 March, 97).
3. Dalton, Richard J. Jr., "Future Not Very Bullish For Commercial Cloning", Newsday.com, http://www.newsday.com:80/mainnews/rnmi011, (7 March, 97).
4. http://www.meatstinks.com/lquest.html, (9 March, 99).
5. http://www.taxmeat.com/enviro.html, (9 March, 99).
6. Davidson, Keay, "To Clone or Not To Clone", San Francisco Examiner, http://www.sfgate.com:80/cgi-bin/examiner/article.cgi?year=1997&month=03&day=04&article=NEWS15526, (7 March, 97).