Liberation Biology

Scientist Lee M. Silver on cloning wars, bioethical battles, and new and improved genes

From the May 1999 issue

(Page 3 of 5)

Reason: OK. (Laughter.)

Silver: Which is amazing. Of course, he's a clone. I didn't do an exact count, but I looked at the hands raised and it was about two-thirds. My point is that people--even educated people--still don't know what cloning is. They have the notion that cloning is more than it really is. People think of the word in a context beyond genetics, that somehow there is a soul that has been replicated in some way that goes beyond the genes. And when I explain that the genes are the same but that the human being that develops is not the same as the human being that existed before, the response I get from lots of people is, "Is that all it is?" So I think the word is actually used incorrectly. You are not copying a person. You are having a child born who has all his genetic material from one parent. When biologists talk about cloning, they are talking about just copying genes. Nothing else. But in this culture, the word has a different meaning--copying, replicating, duplicating.

Now all of a sudden, Ian Wilmut says he cloned a sheep. If he had used a different word, I don't think it would have caused the same response. I also think that there are people who are against cloning for religious reasons and who know perfectly well what is going on, but who are willing to take advantage of the confusion to reach a certain political goal.

Reason: Who and why?

Silver: Oh. I think that it is from a right-to-life perspective. Some people believe that God controls reproduction, and we shouldn't be messing with reproduction, period. And if God doesn't want you to have babies, you shouldn't have babies. And if God decides that you are going to have a baby with a birth defect, well, then that is the way it has to be. This is a religious point of view, and cloning is seen as one more way in which we are interfering with God's will.

Reason: Are embryos people?

Silver: The confusion people have is with the meaning of the words life and alive. We use the words in two very different ways, one meaning vegetative life, the other conscious life. To biologists, life in a vegetative sense simply means the life of cells. In fact, in this beaker [gestures toward beaker containing a pinkish fluid], there are living human cells. Millions of human cells. They are perfectly alive and they are perfectly human, but they are not conscious. But when you talk about human beings and persons, we are talking about consciousness. The best example of the difference that I know of is what happens when a person is shot with a bullet in the heart--he dies almost instantly. And yet, most of his body is still alive. So the person is dead, even though his body, for the most part, is alive. That is the distinction between vegetative life and conscious life. Human embryos are cells, and they are alive in a vegetative sense, not a conscious sense.

Reason: So would you be comfortable with saying something like, "Brains are people and genes are not people?"

Silver: Well, it is the mind that comes out of the brain--and that is sort of a subtle distinction. But I think it is an important distinction. The brain gives rise to the mind, and people, I think, are defined by those minds. Now, genes play a role in building the brain. Genes provide the framework for the human mind. The human mind, of course, is a dynamic entity, while its genes are static.

Reason: That reminds me of an interesting sentence in Remaking Eden: "The human mind is much more than the genes that brought it into existence." What do you mean by that?

Silver: From the moment of conception or of cloning--however you might begin--the genes don't change. And so the genes in each individual are completely static and unchanging. The genes provide instructions for building a brain, but the mind which comes out of that brain can respond to the environment. The mind can change continuously. And the mind--the human mind especially--can be aware of itself. Human beings are different than all other animals because human minds can understand that their genes have given them instincts that they can then turn around and not follow. That's pretty amazing. I mean, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene makes sense in every animal except human beings.

Reason: Because those minds are now able to control their genes?

Silver: Oh. Absolutely. That is exactly right. In fact, yes, the evolution of the future is going to be totally different from the evolution of the past. Evolution by natural selection was based on chance combinations of genes and new mutations that provided a benefit to the individuals that carried them. The offspring of those individuals would out-compete other offspring. That is the way evolution has worked in the past. It was totally by chance. The individuals involved had no control over the evolution. Today, we can control our own evolution. We can decide what genes we give to our children. So we are actually taking control--or will take control in the future--over the evolutionary process by picking the genes we want our children to have. And then those children will have children who can pick the genes they want their children to have. Already, that is being done to a limited extent with embryo selection in fertility clinics. Even with selective abortions, you are choosing not to put certain genes in your child. In choosing to have another pregnancy, you are choosing to have a child without particular genes. So you are controlling evolution there.

Reason: What do you think of bioethics and bioethicists in general?

Silver: I have been called the anti-bioethicist. And that is unfortunate. In fact, I think I am very ethical. I debate and challenge many of the views [held] by some very prominent bioethicists--Leon Kass, Glenn McGee, Art Caplan, and Thomas Murray, for example. I think I am being completely ethical in my point of view, and I think that the opinions of some prominent bioethicists are silly or misinformed. Now there are some bioethicists, like Ruth Macklin, of whom I happen to have a very high opinion. She is a bioethicist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is a scholarly bio-ethicist, not a media bioethicist. My opinion is that very often many bioethicists talk about things they don't understand and they make fools of themselves by doing that.