“Do the Ends Justify the Means?”

            Why do we feel it is necessary to manipulate the inner workings of mankind to such a degree that we begin to “create” new and “improved” humans?  Is it to alleviate pains and sufferings of all those that are under the iron-grip if sickness and disease or are we, to simply put it, attempting to make ourselves better?  Is it because parents want a “perfect” child?  Are we so selfish that we are willing to sacrifice lives in order that we receive what we want?  When we begin to play God with the improvements in bioengineering, we also must begin to face the repercussions that are the inevitable result.

            According to Merriam-Webster bioengineering is the “biological or medical application of engineering principles or engineering equipment,” or “the application of biological techniques (as genetic recombination) to create modified versions of organisms.”  Bioengineering, in its most basic form has been a form of science since the time of the Egyptians. They replaced lost toes with a prosthesis made out of wood in order to allow the person to remain mobile; they also used hollow reeds to investigate the inner workings of the body.  According to the article A History of Biomedical Engineering from the Whitaker Foundation bioengineering (biomedical engineering) ,in the modern sense, began sometime during the 19^th century; in 1895 Wilhelm Roentgen discovered what would become known as “X-rays” and their penetrating abilities.  Development in the field continued and in the early 1960s the NIH (National Institute of Health) took three steps to provide for bioengineering.  According to the Whittaker article the first step was to develop a program that could evaluate the projects in the field, then it set up a “biomedical engineering training” to evaluate applications, and finally they developed two biophysics study sessions.  In 1992 the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering was created as an “umbrella” organization in order to cover the public relations and the politics that, with no doubt, would be involved.  Since 1992 major steps in the advancement of bioengineering have occurred; from the genetic manipulation of crops in order to increase crop yields to ensure a surplus to the cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996 by Dr. Ian Wilmut.  According to bioengineers there are limitless possibilities for the future.

The argument in favor of bioengineering is strong but what we fail to look at are some of the possible results of cloning, is our success worth the sacrifice that some (undoubtedly) would be forced to make?  Do the ends justify the means?  In the article How Healthy are Clones and their Progeny: 5 Years of Experience, Panarace et al discuss the effects and results of the cloning of bovine and their general ability to be used for a source of food.  Their study resulted in some amazing and extremely disturbing statistics: only 9% of transferred embryos resulted in calves, between 90 days of gestation and birth several birth defects were discovered and correlated with the rate of mortality.  Overall 42% of calves that were birthed died within 150 days of birth.  According to Table 1 in How Healthy are Clones and their Progeny we see that, in the U.S., of 2662 embryos transferred at 30 days the number that had survived was 1120.  After 90 days that number was reduced to 475; the number of calves that survived to term was 294, a drastic reduction from the original.  Due to occurrences such as twins 326 calves were born but only 261 survived; 150 days after birth only 182 calves remained alive.  Of these clones that survived they suffered from several infirmities ranging from depressed/prolonged recumbence (24%) to an enlarged umbilical cord (43%).  This study (2002-2007) recorded the results as to whether clones would be healthy after birth but I believe the more important discovery is the birth rate or should I say the mortality rate of the calves.  Of over 2000 embryos not even 200 survived past 150 days. If the object of the study was to produce human clones, would this be an acceptable rate of success?  Would we be so selfish as to be willing to sacrifice the lives of those who cannot speak for themselves in order to receive our own gratification?  Heaven forbid, for then we would become nothing more than a society of eugenicists seeking for the “perfect” specimen, a destruction of humanity.  With the progression of biotechnology and its application into our lives, I believe that we are not far away from the type experiment that are referred to above; but instead of the clones being those of cows they would be living human embryos.  We, as  a people, then would be involved in the murder in over 1800 lives (if the results above are the same); unfortunately though there is a  possibility that due to the increased complexity of both a human’s physiology and psychology the chance for the loss of life or severe birth defects, I believe, would exponentially rise.  The ideas also exist that it would be possible for us to begin to bring a lost one back from the dead or wish to have a “designer baby.”  When this occurs we have completely lost our own sense of humanity, each and every human is a unique being and when an exact copy is created of us or we desire the “resurrection” of a lost loved one we are attempting to destroy the uniqueness of humanity.

Cloning is an undeniably dangerous experiment and on the edge of ethical decisions, but cloning is not the only by-product of the increase in the bioengineering and biotechnology.  Scientists have also begun to manipulate the genes of terminally ill patients in an attempt to cure the subject of their disease; this science is known as gene therapy.   The 2007 feature film I am Legend, portrays the possible results of what could happen when we begin to manipulate genes in an attempt to cure disease.  In the film a cure for cancer, more specifically a vaccine, and it is subsequently administered to a large number of people.  Unforeseen though to the people was the “dehumanization” and “disease” that grew from man’s so called “greatest achievement.”  Though this movie is a work of fiction it holds truths that are evident in the experimentation with gene therapy in today’s scientific community.  A Reuters article reports (Dec. 18, 07) that a “’bubble boy’” in London was being treated for an immune deficiency disorder ( SCID-X1) when it was discovered that his treatment had given him leukemia.  The doctor’s speculate that the treatment received for his original disease cause an increased production of T-cells leading to leukemia.  This, unfortunately, was not the first case gene therapy gone wrong; in 2003 two French boys that were involved in the same type of treatment as the boy in London developed the same type of leukemia due to the same reasons.  “‘This is the nightmare scenario’” according to Terry Roberts of the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge; fortunately for the two French boys childhood leukemia is treatable with a high success rate.  But the more pertinent issue at hand is the fact that the treatments given as cure could have cause the death of these individuals due to unforeseen and unknown possible mutations.  This mistake on the part of the researchers shows that this type of treatment is not ready for use in patients.  The rationalization of scientists is that because no one died in the trials there was no harm done; I beg to differ, with any moral convictions one can see that subjecting this type of medicine to the populous would be a stimulus for the next epidemic.  The scientists were unable to foresee the complications that arose from a rather small sample size of patients what would occur if researchers applied this technology to cure diabetes and the “cure” also gave the patients TB or maybe Parkinison’s disease?  Would that be a risk one would be willing to take? Of course none of these side-effects would be known beforehand so it is possible that the “greatest cure” would also cause the greatest epidemic that the world has ever seen.

There is a last piece of evidence that I shall present in order to  cement my position that cloning and genetic manipulation of any sort can lead to not only the disinegration of humanity but also to many unforeseen dilemmas.  One of the greatest epidemics that sweeping our country today is that of obesity; obesity is defined as the “state of being well above one’s normal weight,” and is more clearly defined by the National Institutes of Health as having “a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 30 and above. (A BMI of 30 is about 30 pounds overweight) What does obesity have to do with cloning?  It has been shown as in the research done by Akio Inui that cloned mice have a greater chance to develop diabetes than regular mice that are on the same diet and exercise program.  Inui, from the Division of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases, Department if Clinical Molecular Medicine, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, states in his article Obesity-A Chronic Health Problem in Cloned Mice that “obesity in cloned mice is likely to reflect epigenetic abnormalities[…]occurs in most rodent models of obesity and in human obesity.”  He also states that new studies have discovered that in cloned mice a side-effect could possibly be obesity due to the methods used to clone.  Inui makes the point that this type of obesity is not inheritable and is not attributable to certain mice eating more; but that it is caused by epigenetic alterations.  The higher body weight of the cloned mice can be also attributed to, according to Inui, “increased adipose mass and […] characteristics of obesity such as hyperleptinemia and hyperinsulinemia.”  If cloning is supposed to allow us to “create” better humans wouldn’t the side effect obesity, in effect, do the complete opposite?  Due to the way our society is, becoming obese is easy; so if our offspring (cloned) are even more susceptible to the epidemic of obesity isn’t that worsening our condition?    

Though I believe that what humanity is searching for in cloning and genetic engineering is invariably wrong, success for success sake must be recognized to at least some degree.  In the experiment done by Panarace et al though the death toll was extremely high those offspring that did survive past 5 years were healthy enough to “normal breeding habits and calving rates and cloned bulls produced good quality semen and had normal fertility when used for AI or natural mating.”  Also the attempts to heal the French boys of their immune deficiencies in the end did heal them; the resulting disease of leukemia, as horrible as a result as possible, was cured eventually.  With just these few examples shows the short term effects of what biotechnology is capable of, but in the end the question remains: does the end justify the means?

When we begin to play God with the technology that man has “created” we must also prepare to deal with the inevitable and even harmful repercussions that will occur.  It has been shown through research that cloning can lead to inert genetic defects, a high mortality rate, and even cause obesity.  As for our attempts at genetic manipulation in order to “cure” disease, we have seen what I would call “failure.”  The curing of one disease does not warrant the creation of another in the same person.  Though advances are continuing to be made in the field of biotechnology, I believe that there is no possibility that we will be able to envision where this path will lead.  Are we prepared to handle what we are well on our way to “creating”?  Do the ends justify the means?

Works Cited 

“Bioengineering.” Merriam-Webster Online. 2007. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 28  March 2008. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bioengineering.

“A History of Biomedical Engineering.” The Whitaker Foundation. May 2002. The Whitaker Foundation. 28 Mar. 2008. http://www.bmes.org/WhitakerArchives/glance/history

Panarace et al. “How Healthy are Clones and their Progeny: 5 Years of Field Experience.” Theriogenology 67 (2007) 142-151. Science Direct. Rogers Library Online, Francis Marion University. 28 Mar. 2008. www.sciencedirect.com/theriogenology/panarace

Lyford, Jo. “Gene Therapy Caused T-cell Leukemia.” The Scientist. Oct. 20, 2003. 28 Mar. 2008. http://cmbi.bjmu.cn/news/0310/106.htm

Hirschler, Ben. “Boy Develops Leukemia after Gene Therapy in the UK.” Reuters. Dec. 18, 2007. 28 Mar. 2008. http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL1817182120071218

“Obesity.” MedTerms Dictionary. Feb. 2, 2001. MedicineNet. 28 Mar. 2008. http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=4607

Inui, Akio. “Obesity- A Chronic Health Problem in Mice?” TRENDS in Pharmalogical Sciences. Vol. 24 No2 Feb. 2003: 77-80. ELSEVIER.  4 April 2008. http://tips.trends.com

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Andrew Donaldson