The possibility of human cloning used to be nothing more than a fantastical science fiction novel plot. Then, in 1996, Dolly the sheep was successfully cloned at the Roslin Institute of Scotland. This showed us that cloning human beings is not only possible, but close to becoming a reality. Dolly’s cloning success sparked heated debates about the morality and ethics of this technology. It also raised dire fears about how it might be used. Recently, scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) have built on the same cloning technology that created Dolly to do something even more fantastical: they have Frankensteined viable human embryos using donated human eggs and skin cells.
How Human Eggs are Formed from Skin Cells
The newly developed process is described by lead author Nuria Marti Gutierrez, Ph.D. and the team of scientists at OHSU in a recently published study in Nature Communications. The short version is that they used a three step process they’re calling “mitomeiosis”.
In the first step, they strip a donor egg of its nucleus and replace it with a skin cell nucleus. This step stems from cloning and is referred to as “somatic cell nuclear transfer” (SCNT). In step two, the skin cell drops half its chromosomes before fertilization via electrical pulse and a drug called Roscovitine . This is necessary in order to end up with 46 total chromosomes. Lastly, they fertilize the eggs using in vitro fertilization (IVF, one of the standard processes used to treat infertile couples). This process has created viable embryos up to the blastocyst embryonic stage, about 5 to 6 days of cell development.
The study co-author, Dr. Paula Amato, says the goal of their research is to treat infertility in women who no longer have viable eggs. This could be due to age or other issues such as egg-destroying cancer treatments. Infertility is an issue that touches most people’s lives these days. If you aren’t struggling with it yourself, you definitely know someone who is, even if they haven’t told you. This new process could also make it possible for same-sex couples to have children related to both partners. It allows them to create a family that’s at least as natural as those of heterosexual couples who use IVF. From both a treatment standpoint and the more cynical one of the multimillion dollar infertility industry, it makes sense that scientists are working so hard to solve this problem.
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The Ethical Quandary Behind This Approach
On the face of it, it’s difficult not to empathize with people desperate to have their own children. However, taking all natural barriers away from people otherwise unable to procreate, without asking what it will do for the health and wellbeing of the babies that will be born to them, would be irresponsible and selfish.
Is there any benefit to children being born to middle-aged parents? Parents whose bodies are beginning to decline in energy levels and are developing common, age-related diseases? For example, is it fair to build a baby from skin cells for a woman who’s survived cancer? In all likelihood, this child may lose their mother to cancer when they’re still very young.
The bottom line is that the human lifespan, lifestyles, and ability to survive diseases has been startlingly enhanced by beneficial science. We’re outstripping nature’s built-in safeguards against overpopulation and problematic genetic material from being reproduced.
Another serious concern is that this process, combined with gene splicing, could make it possible for eugenics to become a more precise kind of ethical nightmare. Fertility clinics could create thousands of embryos with very specific “desirable” traits. SCNT is already being used in agriculture to reproduce animals from specimens with commercially desirable traits like high volumes of milk production.
Instead of cloning a single person, scientists could create embryos from a menu of prized human traits. This might be okay if it was just about creating humans that are less likely to develop cancer. But what happens when you open this technological door to the mainstream? How can you mitigate the risk of someone creating their idea of “the perfect race” and selling it to those who share their vision?
Sourcing Skin Cells for Engineered Human Eggs
Skin cells are ridiculously easy to obtain from almost anyone without their knowledge or permission. Up until now, that’s only been an issue in obtaining DNA for use in crime labs (a predominantly good use). It has also been used to plant evidence at crime scenes to frame others (nefarious by anyone’s standards). Imagine if this process of creating human eggs from skin cells becomes mainstream. People could anyone’s genetic material to create a human being without them knowing it. That’s something that’s been comfortably inconceivable (so far) to anyone besides sci-fi novel writers.
Imagine all the famous and rich people with stalkers who want a real piece of them. The potential for exploitation of DNA for custodial paychecks has to be considered.
However, there’s no need to panic about this advancement yet. According to the team of scientists behind this work, the study is merely a proof of concept at this point. One of the biggest challenges involves getting the proper chromosomal number and combination in the second step of the process. Only 9 percent of their fertilized eggs developed to the blastocyst phase because of chromosomal abnormalities created by the process.
We’re at least a decade away from a point where implanting experimental embryos into human wombs will be feasible. That is, if it’s ever allowed at all. Unless current laws against genetically modifying human embryos change, it’s not something they’ll be allowed to do in the USA.
Just Because We Can, Does That Mean We Should?
With all these bleak ethical concerns, it’s reasonable to wonder if scientists should continue down this road at all. It’s good to remember that some of civilization’s most transformative scientific breakthroughs — like antibiotics — were the happy accidents of unrelated experiments.
The knowledge that led the team of scientists at OHSU to develop this new process for making human eggs out of skin cells came directly from Dolly the sheep. The accidental discovery that you can reprogram cells with adult DNA also sparked a lot of advances in stem cell research. Many scientists believe this has the potential to treat many diseases.
No matter what, the OHSU team is going to learn a lot more than we already know about early embryonic development. The more we make sense of how things work in the universe, the more creation itself seems like impossible magic.
Featured image by ThisisEngineering on Unsplash