The Truth About Cloning At Advanced Cell Technology           We’ve heard this week  a lot about our “cloning” company on Route 9 out in Worcester, “Advanced Cell Technology,” as they renew their demands for federal and state money.           According to the New York Times, the company “has been struggling financially,” and after the announcement this week, the stock went from 42c a share to $1.83.           The leader of their research team, Dr. Robert Lanza, arrogantly told the Times: “There is  no rational reason left to oppose this research.”           We went to a thoughtful lecture in 2002 by their Vice President of Research, Dr. Jose Cibelli, at Holy Cross University, where he made insightful comments.           He said: "This is the power of cloning: Cloning can take a body cell and turn it into an embryo. What we do with this embryo depends on society. We can make an individual, or we can make a stem cell. These issues are currently being debated. Once we decide what to do, we will have to live with it."
	Asked if there is any limit to how far the firm will go with its biological experiments, Dr. Cibelli answered that legality determines the limits of the firm's research, although he has personal limits to what he will attempt.          After reviewing the basic science behind the biological research being conducted by ACT, Dr. Cibelli went to the subject of cloning a duplicate human being, which Advanced Cell Technologies is not currently attempting.
"Why not human reproductive cloning?" asked Dr. Cibelli.           "There are health risks," he said. "Mice and cattle reproductive cloning results have been unpredictable. Out of a series of thirty cloned cattle evaluated by ACT, twenty-four are healthy and vigorous one to four years later, but six died shortly after birth."

Cibelli pointed out that there are international conventions that seek to protect the basic rights of human beings, but he asked: When is a "human being" a "human being?"           After admitting to the audience that he has a bias, Cibelli listed various ideas that people have about when human life begins.           Some believe a human life starts at the moment of conception, he said.

Cibelli believes an embryo becomes an individual human life at 14-days.

      Others believe the embryo is a group of cells with potential to become a human being. Even potential is debated, he said.
       There are those who believe it is wrong to introduce into the embryo anything that will prevent it from fulfilling its potential, while another view says just the potential to become a thing does not give it the status which comes after becoming that thing.
The major religions also do not agree when an individual life begins, he said.

MassNews Asks When Human Life Begins
        MassNews asked Cibelli when he believes human life begins, and do his fellow researchers all believe the same as he?
        Cibelli believes an embryo becomes an individual human life at 14-days, based on a scientific, non-religious rationale. His boss thinks so too. Last year, Dr. Michael D. West, President & CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, Inc. testified to a Senate committee:
        "A human life, as opposed to simply cellular life, begins, at the earliest, at or around day- 14 of human development, at around the time the preimplantation embryo attaches to the uterine wall in the mother."
       Others on the team do not agree with 14 days, according to Cibelli. They think human life begins later.
       On the subject of adult stem cells, Dr. Cibelli said that uses for adult stem cells are limited, such as for bone marrow transplants. He said there are more uses for embryonic stem cells.
       Dr. Cibelli said there is an ethics advisory board at ACT, which is not paid by the company and does not hold company stock. "They have to oversee every single protocol that we do in the lab. They don't have the power to veto my protocols, but they have the power to write about what I'm doing," he said.
       MassNews asked Dr. Cibelli about Glenn McGee, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist who resigned from ACT's ethics board in the fall of 2000, calling corporate ethics boards, "rubber stamps."
       Dr. Cibelli said that McGee was upset when ACT cloned a gaur, claiming he was not part of the conversation. The Asian gaur is an ox-like animal that is in danger of becoming extinct. The cloned gaur died after two days.
       "We have the minutes from that meeting saying that we did talk about it. There are other reasons that I can explain in detail why he resigned. We are very sorry, because he's a good bioethicist."
       MassNews asked Cibelli to tell a little more about how the ethics advisory board works.
       "They meet every two or three months when there are issues. When there is a protocol that I want to try, [gives example] then they meet, and I present to them what I want to do and then they approve it or not. Then we have to make the decision as a company if we are going to go by what they say or just go solo. They oversee everything, they participate in the e-mails within the company and they see what's going on. I can go further, they have a video camera over the lab doing human work. It's recording 24-hours exactly what we are doing. They go over the books and see how many eggs we used."

Ethical Questions They Consider
       Dr. Cibelli told some of the "major ethical questions" the advisory board considers, which he said is the reason the company has so few eggs and is moving so slowly.

What is the moral status of the organisms created by cloning?
Two different views: One says a cloned embryo should have the same respect and protection as an ordinary human embryo. A different view says a cloned organism is not the result of the fertilization of an egg by a sperm and is a new type of entity never before seen in nature.

Is it permissible to create such a developing human entity only to destroy it?
This goes back to the question of when is a human being considered a human being?
ACT does not let a human embryo develop beyond day-12.

Is it right to seek human eggs for scientific research?
A donor has to be very motivated. There are risks associated with the procedure. The procedure is very painful. The company makes sure the donor already has children because of the risks. Donors are financially compensated. About a hundred people are enrolled in the program.

What are the ethical issues relating to the person whose cells are being cloned?
Risks are minimal. Cells are procured through skin biopsy. With rare exceptions, the company does not take cells from children on advice of the advisory board. Privacy is assured to donors.

Will therapeutic cloning facilitate reproductive cloning, the birth of a cloned baby?
Cloning is prone to errors and is unpredictable. We don't really know how it works. I tell students if they want to pick a topic for their Ph.D. and future career, try to find out how cloning works. "We have no idea how it works, we're just doing it," said Dr. Cibelli.