Stunned Chicago area reproductive specialists are wondering which–if any–of their colleagues have promised to work with Richard Seed on a human cloning clinic he has said he will set up here soon.
Seed this week set off an international furor that has been a keyhole into shifting scientific attitudes when he claimed he would open a local clinic to perform human cloning. He said he had assembled a group to perform the work, and patients wanting the procedure.
The medical team, he said, includes an obstetrician/gynecologist with a Chicago area in-vitro fertilization clinic who formerly worked as an infertility specialist at Columbia Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center.
Several reproductive specialists who generally fit that loose description say they haven’t talked to Seed about such a clinic. But another, Dr. W. Paul Dmowski, said Seed had approached him, and that the two had talked about human cloning as recently as last month.
When he read Seed’s description of his silent partners, Dmowski said he wondered whether Seed considered him a backer. But Dmowski emphatically said he is not setting up shop with Seed, adding that to do so would violate the ethical standards of the medical and professional societies to which he belongs.
About 64,000 embryologists, fertility experts and researchers in reproductive medicine have agreed to abide by a moratorium, recommended by the National Bioethics Advisory Committee, not to perform human cloning research for five years. This came about last year after Dolly, the first cloned mammal, a sheep.
“I have no arrangement with Richard Seed and I have no plans for opening a cloning clinic in Chicago,” said Dmowski.
Interviewed late Thursday in his Riverside home, Seed was left temporarily speechless when told of Dmowski’s refusal to participate.
“Good,” Seed said abruptly. “Good that that’s his attitude.”
Seed added, “I know a lot of people in in-vitro fertilization.”
When asked who, Seed offered the name of a specialist who he acknowledged has no interest in cloning.
Asked whether Dmowski’s refusal to participate would be a setback for his plans, Seed replied, “Who said he’s part of the team?”
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When asked directly whether Dmowski was one of the physicians, Seed said, “No. . . . I’ll deny that he’s part of our team.”
Seed added that he had hoped to avoid being “interrogated” by reporters about details of his plans.
Dmowski, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Rush Medical College and director of the Oak Brook Fertility Center, said he has known Seed for years.
“Seed’s talked with me about cloning on many occasions,” said Dmowski. “I said yes, there are many situations, many patients who would benefit from this type of procedure.”
Dmowski said he never supplied Seed with patient names and discussed only in general terms the kinds of cases in which human cloning had potential. Still, Dmowski said he has found his thinking on the issue of human cloning evolving since the announcement about Dolly.
“There is certainly some application for cloning. I have patients who have requested this,” he said. “When in-vitro fertilization was introduced in Norfolk (Va.), people boycotted, people picketed . . . and now in-vitro fertilization is accepted.”
Much the same thing, he said, likely will happen with human cloning.
“Our values as a society, our ethical and moral values do change,” Dmowski said. “The science and the medicine leads to changes and the society follows.”
The attitudinal change Dmowski sees in himself and some of his colleagues also is apparent to policy and legal analysts who study the implications of fast-changing reproductive technology.
“The burden of proof is shifting,” said Lori Andrews, a reproductive law specialist at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. “Scientists are beginning to say, `Prove to us there are risks. Why not do it?’ “
At present, even with animals, the cloning success rate is low. The Scottish team that cloned Dolly required 277 attempts to transfer eggs with new genetic material before they had success. Further, only 10 to 20 percent of the eggs accepted the nucleus from a donor cell. When these were transferred into the uterus, 50 percent died as fetuses. Of those that were born, 30 percent died of abnormalities.
Andrews said that once the technological problems are surmounted, scientists likely will be skeptical of psychological arguments against human cloning.
“Their sense is, there may turn out to be medical benefits and it’s a bad precedent to ever stop science,” she said. “Doctors in general, and you see this in genetic testing, are not concerned about psychological impacts, psychological risks. Their whole training is on the physical risk side, and they haven’t thought about what the emotional impact will be.”
No one has cloned a human being, and human cloning research currently is banned in federal research institutions or laboratories that received government funds for research.
The voluntary moratorium on human cloning permits research on many of the techniques involved in the process, short of implanting a clone into a woman’s uterus.
Laboratories are gearing up for this kind of research because it holds out great promise for treating and reversing chronic disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and Parkinson’s, and for replacing diseased body parts.