Remaking Eden Argumentby Lee M. Silver

Summary

Last October, just before Halloween, The Sunday Times of London ran one of the best over-the-top horror stories of 1997. The paper reported that a University of Bath biologist had created in a laboratory dish living, wriggling tadpoles with no heads! ''Headless frog opens way for human organ factory,'' The Times headline declared. The idea was that platoons of headless human clones could be created to provide a steady supply of fresh, healthy livers, kidneys, hearts and lungs for transplant. (Count on this to be discovered by agents Mulder and Scully on ''The X-Files'' before the season is out.) (Silver 1998, 10-315)

The story drew a quick reaction from Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and J. Craig Venter, head of the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md. In a letter to the journal Science, they dismissed the speculation as ''absurd on both scientific and moral grounds.'' First, they said, keeping headless clones alive until adulthood without brains to orchestrate bodily functions ''would be a virtually impossible task.'' On the moral question they had no doubts: cloning headless humans ''would not be an acceptable use of genetic sciences.'' Why? Because it ''would cheapen respect for the human image and form'' and would ''surely be an impermissible act of creating and sacrificing potential humans solely for the benefit of others.''(Silver 1998, 10-315)

Caplan and Venter were struggling, along with many other ethicists and scientists, to elaborate an ethics in an area where there is little precedent to guide them. Few of history's great moral philosophers took a stand one way or the other on headless tadpoles. Nor did they consider the ethics of cloning humans, or the issues raised by surrogate motherhood, frozen embryos, sperm donors or the genetic enhancement of human beings. Until a short time ago, who could have imagined such things? (Silver 1998, 10-315) In their letter, Caplan and Venter urged that ''ridiculous'' questions concerning headless clones be dismissed so scientists and ethicists can focus on more pressing issues, such as whether DNA testing could threaten privacy, job security or access to health care.

Lee M. Silver, the author of ''Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World,'' takes a different view. No question is too speculative, remote or absurd for Silver, a Princeton University biologist and geneticist who teaches bioethics. He entertains even the wildest and most speculative notions because as he argues persuasively -- the future is already here. Many genetic and reproductive manipulations that seem to be science fiction are far closer to reality than we recognize. (Silver 1998, 10-315)

Headless clones are not among the wonders we are likely to see in the next few years, but the question they raise --whether human beings ought to be produced to donate organs -- is extremely relevant, because, as Silver points out, it has already been done. In 1988, Anissa Ayala, a high school sophomore in suburban Los Angeles, was diagnosed with myelogenous ...