Cloning for Disease Cures of Cancer and Leukemia

Therapeutic Cloning for Leukimia and Cancer

The Origin of Obstacles to Progress in Medical Science:

When Flemish Scholar Andreas Vesalius published the first medical textbook on anatomy in 1543, he did so at great personal risk, owing to the strict prohibitions of the medieval Catholic Church against any posthumous dissection of the human body.

Partly for this reason, it would be almost another full century before William Harvey correctly outlined the human circulatory system (Hellemans & Bunch, 1988).

Throughout the twentieth century, the Church has continued to voice its strong opposition to some of the most beneficial developments of modern medical progress, such as organ donation, artificial insemination and, of course, contraception, even in the most impoverished regions of the world where thousands of infants die every single day from starvation caused by overpopulation. The most recent area of conflict between medical research and the Church concerns the countless beneficial potential applications of stem cell research and cloning technology for the treatment of human diseases such as Leukemia and other cancers.

The Therapeutic Potential of Cloning Technology for Leukemia and other Cancers:

Leukemia is a perfect example of a devastating human illness that could be readily treated with derivative applications of research that is the subject of much current controversy. In healthy human beings, blood cells are continually produced within the marrow of bones. Leukemia consists of several specific related cancerous illnesses of the white blood cells in which the acute forms destroy the normal mechanisms by which blood is produced in the marrow.

Generally, in Leukemia, defectively formed white blood cells completely overgrow the bone marrow, for which the only medical treatment is a bone marrow transplant from a healthy donor. The problem is, unless the marrow donor is genetically identical to the recipient, the normal autoimmune system will attack and destroy the newly transplanted bone marrow. Only one in 10,000 or 20,000 people is an appropriate match for any given unrelated individual, and even siblings and parents are only thirty to forty percent likely to be appropriate bone marrow donors (Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, 2003). Consequently, the patients with the most realistic hope of a successful bone marrow transplantation are those fortunate enough to have a living identical twin. Even so, harvesting bone marrow is an invasive and painful procedure for the donor with risks of significant complications.

Cloning technology would enable Leukemia patients all to receive perfectly compatible bone marrow, because if scientists are allowed to pursue medical research into stem cell and cloning technology, doctors could eventually extract stem cells from the patient himself, from which a single cell could be reprogrammed to produce healthy bone marrow after re-implantation (Krock, 2001). Embryonic stem cells are potentially even more valuable for curing Leukemia, but current U.S. law absolutely prohibits any funding for continued stem cell research except on stem cell lines already in existence prior to 2001.

Stem cell research and cloning technology represent potential cures for many other types of cancers besides Leukemia and Lymphoma. Generally, cancer is the result of a mutation in normal organic cells that causes uncontrolled growth and multiplication. Many scientists believe that stem cell research and cloning technology hold the elusive key to finally curing mankind of the scourge of many forms of cancer. Indeed, U.S. researchers recently published a study in the journal Genes and Development in which they demonstrated that even cancerous cells might be repaired using cloned embryonic cells. The particular experiment employed mouse embryos cloned from a melanoma skin cell to create healthy adult mice, demonstrating that malignancy might be preventable or reversible (Fox, 2004).

Cancer researchers have already demonstrated successfully the principle of targeting cancer genes at the molecular level. By injecting embryonic cells with healthy genes, it is possible to manipulate DNA and eliminate specific defective genes that are known to cause cancer (Kaku, 1997). Ultimately, stem cell research and cloning technology have the potential to cure practically all cancers at the genetic level, but current legislation strictly prohibits practically all of the necessary research to apply cloning technology to human medicine and any federal funding of research on new stem cell lines.

Ethical Analysis and Conclusion:

The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed some of the most incredible advances in the biological sciences since Watson and Crick first detailed the basic structure of the DNA helix in 1953. In vitro fertilization had already been achieved by 1978, but when British researchers actually succeeded in cloning a sheep from a single adult sheep cell, it ignited both the hopes of medical researchers as well as furious protests on the ethics of human cloning. Combined with the early completion of the Human Genome Project, stem cell research and cloning technology now represent the potential for incredible advances in the medical treatment of countless other diseases such as Alzheimer's, Diabetes, Parkinson's, Sickle Cell Anemia, not to mention reversing traumatic paralysis and (eventually) providing entire new organs for the thousands of patients who die every year while waiting for donor organs which are perpetually in short supply.

In 1997, the Clinton Administration hastily prohibited all research into human cloning science, primarily out of (rightful) concern over the prospect of irresponsible attempts by unscrupulous researchers to capitalize on the economic (or publicity) potential of cloning an actual human being before it is medically responsible and ethical to do so.