don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

There is much controversy about human cloning. While human cloning has not been done and there is no certainty that it CAN be done, this has not restrained varied clergy, ethicists and politicians, including the president and Congress, from weighing in with expressions of grave concern and/or demands for restrictions or complete bans on research that might support steps toward human cloning. What is a wellness perspective on this subject?

As you might know from reading these daily essays, there is no official wellness perspective on anything. The concept is not a religion, there is no dogma and no college of cardinals or pope of wellness who can plausibly issue proclamations, infallible or otherwise, on matters of self-managing faith and morals -- or anything else! That does not mean some wellness advocates, such as yours truly, do not have plenty of opinions on matters of interest and consequence to the evolving wellness movement and concepts. How else could I have available for your consideration and edification, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all year round, nearly 400 treatises in three Indexes available at the end of this DR? So, let me offer a wellness perspective on cloning for your consideration.

The first part of any such perspective is to get the facts straight. Most politicians seem to have moved rapidly ahead of the facts in an effort to show the voters that they support all the right values on this matter about which most people are not extremely well informed. Going off on a topic with strong opinions without first understanding the issues is definitely NOT a wellness approach. Critical thinking, on the other hand, IS a key skill area within the lifestyle domains of a self-managing mindset -- and critical thinking is very much needed in the debate over human cloning.

While the cloning issue has been in the news for some time, the latest development that returned the issue to the attention of President Bush and a host of indignant Republican Senators was a PR initiative by a Worcester, MA biotech company called Advanced Cell Technology (ACT). The company spokesperson claimed that ACT had created the first human embryos ever produced by cloning -- never mind that the embryos died before they had even eight cells, and most before that. Though every self-respecting cloning expert not employed by ACT termed the experiment good hype, not good science and a failure to boot, the Republicans and other religious forces went ballistic. Thus, we were treated this week to yet another round in a free-ranging ethical controversy over the much broader area of human cloning. Since the Congress already banned the use of public funds in any cloning research involving human embryos, and the work at ACT was privately funded, why were the politicos bothering to rant about the ACT research?

It should be understood by those who care to trouble themselves about the facts in this debate that ACT was not trying to clone a human "Dolly," the sheep made infamous a while back as the first cloned animal. Instead, ACT was seeking a method of combining human eggs and a person's own cells to create embryos for the purpose of creating stem cells. That is what the cloning issue is about -- efforts to create stem cells that can be used for therapeutic purposes. In theory, at least, stem cells could grow into virtually any cell type. That is the goal of cloning research. If successful, such exact genetic match cells could serve as replacement tissue in diseases like diabetes and maybe supply tissue for transplantation. Patients would not require anti-rejection drugs.

What is there to oppose in such efforts? A stem cell is NOT a human being! Destroying a cloned embryo to extract its stem cells is NOT murder any more than every sperm is sacred, to recall a delightful song from the Monty Python movie "The Meaning of Life!" Think what you like about the abortion debate -- stem cells are not cute little pre-people who are being slaughtered by Dr. Frankenstein successors in American Transylvanian-like labs across the country. President Bush needs some advisors more sophisticated than Attorney General John Ashcroft counseling him on this debate!

Must science always wait for public policy clearance before proceeding? That's how things are in theocratic societies today, and that's how they were in such societies throughout most of history. In Europe nearly four centuries ago, on April12, 1633 to be exact, Galileo Galilei was summoned to appear before the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome for publishing opinions about the stability of the Sun and the motion of the Earth in his epic work Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The Inquisition eventually found Galileo guilty and it was not until 1822, nearly two centuries later, that the Congregation of the Holy Office saw fit to allow publication of books (read-unfettered research to proceed) on modern astronomy expounding the movement of the Earth. Will President Bush and other hysterical opponents of stem cell research someday be viewed as the Pope Urban VIII's of the early 21st century? Or, will we not have to wait that long for such a perspective?

Speaking of perspective, I suggest ALOTBSOL -- always look on the bright side of life. If that seems daunting, given the machinations of politicians on cloning and nearly everything else, consider this: Astrophysicists believe that in the distant future (10 trillion trillion trillion years after the Big Bang of a mere 15 billion years ago), the "degenerate era" will see planets detach from stars, and stars and planets evaporate from galaxies. What's more, dead stars will wither into white dwarfs or will blow up and collapse into neutron stars and black holes. Eventually, after many more trillions and trillions of years, the cosmos will enter the "dark era" wherein "only waste products remain -- mostly photons, neutrinos, electrons and positrons, wandering through a universe bigger than the mind can conceive...From here into the infinite future, the universe remains cold, dark and dismal." (Source: Time Magazine, "The End," June 25, 2001, pp 53.) So, no point being all dark and dismal now -- enjoy and cheer up.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of factual knowledge. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

 Send e-mail to Don Ardell