From the Princeton Weekly Bulletin, June 23, 1997
Shapiro presents cloning report
By Sally Freedman
On June 9, President Shapiro presented to President Clinton a 110-page document: "Cloning Human Beings: Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission" (NBAC). The 18-member commmission, chaired by Shapiro, had been asked by Clinton to "undertake a thorough review of the legal and ethical issues" associated with a new cloning technique that came to world attention in late February, when it was reported that an adult sheep had been cloned in Scotland. NBAC was given 90 days to examine the implications with respect to cloning human beings. (A summary of the report is on page 8.)
"It was a remarkable challenge to deal with such a complex issue in such a short period of time, with a group of people who were working full time on other things," Shapiro says.
In addition, "We had to get used to working in a completely public context. The meetings were open to the public, and a full transcript of what was said appeared on the World Wide Web eight days later. In a private context you can speculate out loud or even take extreme positions, just as a way to clarify your thinking. But in a public context people may not understand what you say as preliminary thoughts but take it as your actual position. I don't say operating in a public context is bad; a lot of positive things come from it. But it took some getting used to."
The commission held half a dozen formal meetings in Washington, D.C. In addition, there were "many more meetings of small working groups of two or three people drafing parts of the report, and an enormous amount of e-mail traffic," Shapiro says.
"Our last meeting was Saturday, June 7. We had a draft of the report and spent the meeting making revisions--emendations, additions, subtractions. I was trusted to pull it all together in a way that reflected the thinking of the commission. I wrote all through Sunday, and the report was delivered to the President on Monday morning."
What do the other members think of the final product? "Most of the ones I've heard from are just astonished that it got done," Shapiro says with a laugh. "At any rate, I haven't had any complaints."
The complete report includes sections on "The Science and Application of Cloning," "Religious Per spectives," Ethical Considerations," "Legal and Policy Considerations," and "Recommendations." Shapiro expects copies of the report to be available for the general public in "a couple of weeks" and the full text to be posted on the NBAC home page at http://www.nih.gov/nbac/nbac.htm.
Very demanding, very rewarding
The report recommends a continuation of the current moratorium on the use of federal funding in support of human cloning research and a request to privately funded sectors to comply voluntarily with the intent of the moratorium. It also recommends enacting legislation "to prohibit anyone from attempting to create a child" by this kind of cloning, but it specifies that such legislation should include review after a certain period of time to see if the ban should be continued.
More scientific information and more public education are needed before any definitive decisions should be made on the issue of human cloning, the commission believes. As Shapiro points out, misconceptions are rife in the public understanding of these issues.
For instance, he says, "There is just no such thing as genetic determinism. Genes matter a lot, but external circumstances matter even more. If I cloned myself, the baby would probably look a lot like me, but it would be born in 1998 and grow up in a very different world than the baby I was, born in 1935. It would become a totally different person. The bizarre notion of someone cloning a legion of supermen to take over the world is just that--a bizarre notion borrowed from science fiction. If one wants a new army of soldiers, open a new West Point; if one wants more great scientists, open a new university. Cloning is a much less reliable way to accomplish such objectives."
Shapiro anticipates that if the proposal for legislation goes forward, he and other members of the committee will be called upon to testify before Congress, but he thinks that "our contribution to the issue of this kind of cloning has mainly been made." He hopes that NBAC will now be able to return to the "original agenda" specified in the charge to the commission in 1995: human subject protection.
He looks forward to continued work with the commission, which he describes as "an extremely congenial group--hardworking and good-humored. I feel I've made a lot of new friends in the course of what has been a very demanding but very rewarding process."