Fearsome Biotech
The most telling words in Tuesday’s House debate on a bill to ban human cloning came from Rep. Louise McIntosh Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who is by training a microbiologist. She interrupted Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.) as he fumbled his way through an explanation of how the bill would bar scientists from introducing “foreign” DNA into a human egg cell. “Mr. Deutsch,” Slaughter asked, “does it trouble you that with all the difficulty you have had explaining this that we are about to debate it?”
“In all my years in this chamber,” Deutsch confessed, “this is the least informed the members have ever been.”
Informed or not, the House passed a sweeping ban on human cloning Tuesday, and the scientific community is crying foul. Biotechnologists rightly say the bill is too broadly worded, so that it bans not just cloning for the purposes of creating a child but also scientific research that could help cure disease.
Ultimately, however, the ill-informed and fearful nature of the debate comes down to scientists’ own hubris. In recent years, biotechnologists have brashly dismissed legitimate public concerns as little more than science fiction.
Big agribusinesses, for example, have let genetically modified plants mix with natural crops, while infertility specialists like Kentucky’s Panos Michael Zavos have announced plans to clone human beings, brushing aside Americans’ broad revulsion.
The Senate should begin work now on a carefully worded alternative to the House bill; it should seek to bar scientists from cloning embryos to create a child while still allowing them to transfer DNA into an egg to, for example, create pancreatic cells that won’t be rejected after being put into a diabetic’s body.
In the long term, however, only scientists can protect themselves from overzealous legislation through greater disclosure and more openness. They can begin by talking with, rather than condescending to, individuals and groups that have raised valid concerns that biotechnologies will harm the environment or deepen the divide between rich and poor.
Popular tales from Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” to Steven Spielberg’s “Artificial Intelligence” reflect widespread and not entirely irrational fears: that scientists will someday use genetic manipulation in ways that put social values at risk. Scientists who dismiss ethical or religious concerns only stoke anxieties like those that resonated through the House earlier this week. Ultimately, technologies will be accepted only once they are better understood.
