William Kristol, editor
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TRUTH, famously the first casualty of war, is now falling victim to the latest skirmish in the biotech wars. Euphemism and doublespeak are the order of the day, and not because of timid politicians or shameless propagandists, but, shockingly, because of the eagerness of a leading university to embark on human cloning research.
Earlier this week, Stanford University announced the creation of a $12 million research center that would, among other things, produce cloned human embryos for biomedical research. This research--which its advocates now call "nuclear transplantation to produce human pluripotent stem cell lines"--involves the insertion of a person's DNA into an enucleated human egg. This produces a living, dividing, developing human embryo--a genetic copy or clone of a living individual--which researchers plan to destroy in order to extract its stem cells.
Over the past few years, such cloning experiments have been the subject of widespread public debate. In July 2001, the U.S. House of Representatives passed, by more than 100 votes, a ban on all human cloning, including the procedure now embraced by Stanford. In July 2002, the President's Council on Bioethics recommended a four-year moratorium on the production and use of cloned human embryos for biomedical research, so that the nation might debate the moral and scientific issues fully and fairly before deciding whether or not to cross this moral boundary.
Stanford's announcement is important: In a country still weighing the significance and moral dangers of taking the first steps toward human cloning, a major research university has decided to
plunge ahead. Stanford seems to believe that the question of whether to harvest and exploit cloned human embryos--and perhaps eventually cloned human fetuses--is one for scientists and internal university review boards, not citizens and their democratic institutions.
Yet the Stanford scientists apparently can't decide whether to proceed brashly, as triumphant benefactors of mankind whom Congress cannot stop, or with serpentine guile, hiding what they are doing by describing it in terms impenetrable (and misleading) even to an ethically concerned public. So far--as multiple statements, press conferences, and news stories attest--they have done both. They have lied. They have misled. And they have sown confusion.
On December 10, the Associated Press reported: "Stanford Reveals Human Embryo Clone Plan." Claiming the story was "incorrect," the university immediately issued the following statement:
"Creating human stem cell lines is not equivalent to reproductive cloning. The first step in the process of creating a stem cell line involves transferring the nucleus from a cell to an egg and allowing the egg to divide. This is the same first step as in reproductive cloning. However in creating a stem cell line, cells are removed from the developing cluster. These cells can go on to form many types of tissues, but cannot on their own develop into a human."
A few hours later, the AP story--same author, different spin--had been changed: "Stanford to Develop Human Stem Cells." The same day, Stanford's spokeswoman told the Washington Post, "We're not cloning embryos, and we're not going to clone embryos."
The problem, however, is that this is not true. The "developing cluster" described in Stanford's own statement is an embryo. It is uniquely desired by scientists because it is a cloned embryo. And if implanted into a woman's uterus, it could develop into a cloned human child.
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