Cloning humans? Biological, ethical, and social considerations

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 112; no. 29; pp. 8879 - 8886
• Main Author: Ayala, Francisco J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States National Academy of Sciences 21.07.2015; National Acad Sciences
• Subjects: Animals; Bioethics; Biological Sciences; Cloning; Cloning, Organism - ethics; cultural evolution; ethics; Fertility; gene therapy; genes; Genetic Diseases, Inborn - therapy; Genetic disorders; Genetic Therapy; Genetics; Genomics; Genotype; health services; human diseases; human origins; Human subjects; Humans; In the Light of Evolution IX: Clonal Reproduction: Alternatives to Sex Sackler; inheritance (genetics); mortality; natural selection; neurons; organ transplantation; people; Phylogeny; Social Values; therapeutic cloning; Transplants & implants; therapeutic cloning; human origins; natural selection; genetic therapy; cultural evolution
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1501798112

There are, in mankind, two kinds of heredity: biological and cultural. Cultural inheritance makes possible for humans what no other organism can accomplish: the cumulative transmission of experience from generation to generation. In turn, cultural inheritance leads to cultural evolution, the prevailing mode of human adaptation. For the last few millennia, humans have been adapting the environments to their genes more often than their genes to the environments. Nevertheless, natural selection persists in modern humans, both as differential mortality and as differential fertility, although its intensity may decrease in the future. More than 2,000 human diseases and abnormalities have a genetic causation. Health care and the increasing feasibility of genetic therapy will, although slowly, augment the future incidence of hereditary ailments. Germ-line gene therapy could halt this increase, but at present, it is not technically feasible. The proposal to enhance the human genetic endowment by genetic cloning of eminent individuals is not warranted. Genomes can be cloned; individuals cannot. In the future, therapeutic cloning will bring enhanced possibilities for organ transplantation, nerve cells and tissue healing, and other health benefits.