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229  Egg Transplants: Not the End of the World
     The Washington Post  Sunday, June 20, 1971
     "The nature of the bond between parents and their children, not
to mention everyone's values about the individual's uniqueness ,
could be changed beyond recognition."  According to Harvard professor
James D. Watson, in testimony before the House Committee on Science
and Astronautics, this is the probable outcome of experiments in human
embryology.  He believes that scientists have neglected to discuss the
technical possibilities of new directions in human reproductive
biology, and he suggests that strict laws be considered against
experimental studies with human embryos.  Indeed, these must be
controlled by international agreement, for no country has a monopoly on
scientific talent and interest.
     Watson also remarks that some "believe the matter is of marginal
importance now, and that is a red herring designed to take our minds
off our callous attitudes toward war, poverty, and racial prejudice."
What appears at first sight to be a mischievous suggestion may then be
grand spoof, worthy of the author of "The Double Helix."
     My own stance is accurately quoted by Watson: "Lederberg, among
the first to talk about cloning as a practical matter, now seems bored
with further talk...we should channel our influence to the prevention
of the widescale, irreversible damage to our genetic material that is
now occurring through increasing exposure to man-created mutagenic
compounds. To him, serious talk about cloning is essentially crying wolf
when a tiger is already inside the walls."
     By cloning, Watson refers to experiments, now done many times
with frogs, in which the egg nucleus is replaced by another one taken
from a mature cell.  From a strictly genetic standpoint, the result is
equivalent to making a cutting from a rosebush.  Bypassing the sexual
process means that the progeny is like an identical twin--a result
that many people confuse with making an identical copy of a
personality.
     Is this worth making such a fuss about?  What a plausible comedy
one could write about the diplomatic maneuvering, the investments in
bargaining chips, the conflicting intelligence reports, in the
background of the international conference Watson projects.  And we
can again see China and France as probable holdouts against an
egg-nucleus test-ban treaty, believing that their national interests
might be better served by retaining independent options.
     But there is a heartache behind that comedy.  The world-system
would not know how to reach such an agreement even if it were in fact
necessary for global survival. Every scientist must face the ambivalent
potential of knowledge as it may be applied in a world that does
not know how to govern itself.  However, scientists may be overly
self-conscious, for the same potentials for abuse apply to statesman-
ship, industry, even the arts--every human activity that maintains the
fabric of a nation.
     Risk of Confusion
     It would be awkward to have to make a case for cloning in man--we
simply do not have the necessary background of animal experimentation
to know what risks would be involved, nor to know what human need
would ever be served by it.  Some might be imagined--for example, to
circumvent many types of sterility that now prevent a couple from
having any child "of their own"; but other solutions to such problems
might also be developed.  Nor would I condone a trial of cloning if I
could place any credence in Watson's concern that "all hell will break
loose" just when a child is born by such a route.
     Even then, I would wonder about formal limitations on research on
eggs and embryos.  Just how would this be policed?  Should it apply to
studies of animals, or of human cell cultures, which might eventually
lead to knowledge about human eggs?  Should we purge the scientific
literature, and the textbooks, of references to such knowledge?  Do we
censor publications from other countries?  Should we discourage even
thinking about such pornography?  If Hell were really that imminent,
none of these steps would be out of bounds.  But we know we will not
take them.  Instead we may face a more insidious confusion about which
lines of research are moral, which not; and this may further erode the
already fragile public support for basic research in general.
     Watson's actual concerns about embryological research seem to be:
(1) that babies conceived not in sin will have an aberrant psychic
relationship to their parents,(2) that women may be exploited as
surrogate mothers, carrying someone else's eggs, and (3) that a
totalitarian regime might use all of these methods for genetic
regimentation.
     These are not questions that can be answered by the techniques of
molecular biology.  However, I believe that Watson has overrated the
importance of DNA, in contrast to other conjugal and family bonds, in
his predictions of disaster.  In birth-controlling cultures, most
children are a product of intention.  Do we believe that planned
children have a looser bond to their parents than the accidentals?
Studies of children conceived by artificial insemination, and above
all, common knowledge of adopted children, give the lie to the premise
that the filial bond is woven by impregnation.
     As to surrogate motherhood, Watson is concerned with more than
coercion, or the hire of a wet-nurse's uterine services.  He fears
that "the boring meaningless of the lives of many women would be
sufficient cause for their willingness".  Is he decrying embryology
or sexist oppression?  In proper libertarian style, women may defend
their right to be diverted however it suits them.  But perhaps they
will also support legislation that would punish any initiation of
pregnancy without a woman's willing consent to the pregnancy.  Most
of the prosecutions would have nothing to do with transplanted eggs.
     Do we really need any new law to cope with the fantasied  chances
for abuse?  Surely no court would enforce a prenatal contract that
required giving up a child after it was born.  The law should perhaps
clear up the confusion that remains in  some states about the legal
parenthood of children born from artificial insemination.  And in the
process, it could also reaffirm what common sense tells us--that a
that a child is born to the mother who carried him, no matter how
or whether conceived.  But is there any reason to deny a barren
woman the possibility of experiencing pregnancy?
Dangers of State Control
     Statist intrusions do worry me.  Cloning is the only technique
by which the fantasies of the racial purists could be realized, and
if Hitler had had a scientific view of race, he might have promulgated
the method.  But nothing would be gained toward forfending such an
abuse by stopping biological research in democratic countries today.
Nor would there have been greater advantage in preserving the false
doctrines of Nazi race-biology or Stalinist Lysenkoism at the
expense of our modern knowledge of DNA.  Future tyrants would have
tortured their captives less "scientifically," but not less
viciously.
     Few people, nevertheless, fail to be repelled by the idea of a
population of xerocopies of a particular genetic type, as might
result from the renucleation of a harem of eggs.  The force of the
metaphor has little to do with the realities of such a prospect.
Is it after all much more likely, or more malevolent than siring
a herd by conventional methods?  Our reactions are connected with a
universal protest against de-individualization, against the shrinkage
of our individual creativity space in an ever more crowded world.
     In fact, studies of separated twins show that most personality
traits owe about as much to variations in environment as to
variations in heredity, even within the confines of lower-middle
class white culture.  It follows that human variety among cultures,
across national and ethnic boundaries, is mainly of environmental
origin today, and would not be profoundly altered even if the gene
pool of the species were narrowed to many fewer types.
     This argument is not to advocate a genetic xerocopy process.
It does suggest that the cloning metaphor confuses the real sources
of loss of individuality.  The metaphor is above all a parody of the
expectations that many parents today have of their children.
     There is a paradoxical danger that legal controls against
innovations in reproductive method or against parental control
increase the danger of state interference -- just as the actual
policing of pornography is a serious threat to valid free speech.
     On the other hand, the renucleation of human eggs cannot be
regarded as a subject of frivolous or irresponsible whimsey.  For
one thing it must be preceded by a large body of investigative work
on other animals -- and the successful cloning of a mouse, though
overdue by some of my own prophecies, has yet to be reported.
During the interval that such laboratory findings appear and are
critically reviewed, we can also ponder whether there are any
legitimate human applications of such a technique and the context
in which they should be judged.  Differing views may be taken of
the abstract morality of cloning in principle.  A botched effort
in a field as notorious as this will be unanimously judged as
harshly, and will be as damaging to any future efforts, as was
the fire that killed three Apollo astronauts.
     Watson's specific comments oscillate among several orders of
irony.  They are nevertheless a commendable caution about relating
experimentation on human life to actual human needs.  I also agree
with him that this is too important a subject to be left solely in
the hands of the scientific and medical communities.  I am not much
more optimistic about the moral precision that is achievable by
laws -- these are by definition written by politicians.  There are
many matters that must be left to individual conscience, and the
moral sanctions of an informed community.  At some point, a
responsible physician must give counsel as well as provide treatment
to a patient in his charge.
     There are indeed tigers within our walls that deserve more
immediate attention from our lawmakers.  We can prevent moral
dilemmas about how to remove genetic defects by paying more attention
to preventive environmental hygiene.  A scandalously small number of
the additives we pour into our milieu -- in drugs, foods, water
and air pollutants -- have been tested for their genetic impact;
and we have a long way to go in perfecting and reliably interpreting
such tests.
     And to think that teachers and engineers are out of work when
we still provide so stingily and so clumsily for the most important
of gene products -- the eager minds of the nation's children!
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