PETA Offers $1 Million Reward to First to Make In Vitro Meat

Scientists around the world are researching or seeking the funds to research ways to produce meat in the laboratory—without killing any animals. In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten. Some promising steps have been made toward this technology, but we’re still several years away from having in vitro meat be available to the general public.

PETA is now stepping in and offering a $1 million reward to the first scientist to produce and bring to market in vitro meat.

Why is PETA supporting this new technology? More than 40 billion chickens, fish, pigs, and cows are killed every year for food in the United States in horrific ways. Chickens are drugged to grow so large they often become crippled, mother pigs are confined to metal cages so small they can’t move, and fish are hacked apart while still conscious—all to feed America’s meat addiction. In vitro meat would spare animals from this suffering. In addition, in vitro meat would dramatically reduce the devastating effects the meat industry has on the environment.

Via InstaPundit, here’s a Popular Mechanics piece with more details on this emerging technology.

Whatever you might think about PETA (and I personally have never thought much), they are to be applauded for taking this step. All their accumulated shock messages, sanctimonious political posturing, and obnoxious, not to mention frequently dangerous, behavior over the years have probably had a net effect of making most people less sympathetic to the cause of animal rights (or at least animal well-being) than they would have been. But this is a positive step — a financial incentive to bring about a new technology that can eliminate animal suffering and end a lot of environmental damage associated with livestock farming.

1. Cloning is not a human photocopier.

A clone is a genetic duplicate of an organism. It is an identical twin to the original, delivered at some later date (or else we’d just call it a twin, not a clone) and — presumably — by a different mother. So if your are cloned, you will share the same relationship with that individual that an identical twin shares with his or her sibling. As Rand points out, it’s unclear what familial relationship you will legally share with the clone. The clone could be your child, your sibling, your cousin, or no (legal) relation whatsoever. It all depends on who is doing the cloning.

Unless and until some radically new human gestation technology is developed (see point 2) any human clones who arrive in this world will do so the way everyone else does. They will be babies, born of mothers. Your clone will not be an adult duplicate of you with all your memories, but rather a baby with a predisposition to grow up looking, perhaps acting, and maybe thinking a lot like you. That’s all.

Human photocopier technology may be with us at some point. In fact, we spent an entire segment discussing the implications of such technology on the most recent FastForward Radio. But cloning is not it.

2. Cloning is not growing armies in vats.

There is a popular idea that clones are synthesized or manufactured human beings. They are not. To quote myself:

Reproductive cloning raises serious moral and ethical issues, but “cloned armies” is not one of them. The ability to produce armies would require not cloning, but a technique popular in (uninformed) science fiction movies that might properly be called Rapidly Growing Large Numbers of Sentient Adults in Vats. That I know of, no one is currently working on developing that technology…

For the time being, producing a human clone will require having a viable mother willing to carry the child to term. You’ll need a mother for every child (just like you do now) and you’ll need the full nine months. There are no shortcuts and no economies of scale with cloning. Should either RGLNSAV or the related but more modest RGLNBV (Rapidly Growing Large Numbers of Babies in Vats) come on line at some point, some serious issues may emerge. Of course, even just using sperm (plenty of that around) and eggs (harder, but by no means impossible, to get in large quantities) to produce your Insta-Army, both RGLNSAV or RGLNBV could cause plenty of mischief.

But again, they don’t exist and — as far as I know — no one is trying to develop them.

3. Clones are not slaves

The slavery issue comes up in the “cloned army” scenario, also in nightmare scenarios such as The Island, wherein — spoilers coming — clones are created to provide replacement parts for evil rich people. At least The Island gets the legalities right — clones are human beings, and human beings are protected by law in most jurisdictions from being held against their will or forced to sacrifice themselves by providing replacement parts for others. So any racket like in The Island would require operating underground. Cloned armies would also have to be created somewhere outside of most legal jurisdictions. Sharing the same genetic code with someone else does not erase or diminish one’s humanity under law, or else we’d have special rules about how we treat identical twins.

There was an episode in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation which managed to pull off a hat-trick where these three misconceptions are concerned. The Enterprise encounters a small society that reproduces only by cloning which needs an infusion of fresh blood, as it were. Things quickly get wacky…

The Mariposans ask the Enterprise-D crew for a sample of their DNA, so they could create new clones. The crew refuses, so the Mariposans kidnap Commander William Riker and Doctor Katherine Pulaski to steal their DNA. When Riker and Pulaski find out, they visit the colony’s cloning labs and destroy the new clones.

The clones that Riker and Pulaski kill are adults. They are still in vats, though, and I think they’re bald. The basic idea here seems to be that Riker and Pulaski are perfectly entitled to murder these mostly formed adult human beings because they are

– Exact duplicates of Riker and Pulaski, and therefore in some sense a violation of their right to individuality.

– Not yet conscious. This is never explicitly stated, but the scene where they kill the clones would have been even harder to swallow had the clones opened their eyes and looked scared.

I believe the makers of this episode were attempting to draw some clumsy analogy to abortion. Unfortunately, due to the rapid maturation provided by the vat technology, the Riker and Pulaski clones looked to have been somewhere in the 100th and 120th trimesters, respectively. Either under Federation law, Roe v. Wade has been substantially expanded, or the presumption that one’s clone is simply one’s property to do with as one wishes is a firmly embedded legal principle of the 24th century.

However, under the more primitive and restrictive laws of the 21st century, it’s clear that killing your adult (or infant) clone would land you in jail for murder. And I have a feeling that the “I was protecting my individuality” defense would get you nowhere. Well, maybe you’d have a shot with a California jury, but otherwise…

I’m hardly suggesting that there are no serious legal and ethical issues that must be considered where cloning is concerned. There are. But we can only deal with them seriously when we stop talking about all this nonsense.

1. Cloning is not a human photocopier.

A clone is a genetic duplicate of an organism. It is an identical twin to the original, delivered at some later date (or else we’d just call it a twin, not a clone) and — presumably — by a different mother. So if your are cloned, you will share the same relationship with that individual that an identical twin shares with his or her sibling. As Rand points out, it’s unclear what familial relationship you will legally share with the clone. The clone could be your child, your sibling, your cousin, or no (legal) relation whatsoever. It all depends on who is doing the cloning.

Unless and until some radically new human gestation technology is developed (see point 2) any human clones who arrive in this world will do so the way everyone else does. They will be babies, born of mothers. Your clone will not be an adult duplicate of you with all your memories, but rather a baby with a predisposition to grow up looking, perhaps acting, and maybe thinking a lot like you. That’s all.

Human photocopier technology may be with us at some point. In fact, we spent an entire segment discussing the implications of such technology on the most recent FastForward Radio. But cloning is not it.

2. Cloning is not growing armies in vats.

There is a popular idea that clones are synthesized or manufactured human beings. They are not. To quote myself:

Reproductive cloning raises serious moral and ethical issues, but “cloned armies” is not one of them. The ability to produce armies would require not cloning, but a technique popular in (uninformed) science fiction movies that might properly be called Rapidly Growing Large Numbers of Sentient Adults in Vats. That I know of, no one is currently working on developing that technology…

For the time being, producing a human clone will require having a viable mother willing to carry the child to term. You’ll need a mother for every child (just like you do now) and you’ll need the full nine months. There are no shortcuts and no economies of scale with cloning. Should either RGLNSAV or the related but more modest RGLNBV (Rapidly Growing Large Numbers of Babies in Vats) come on line at some point, some serious issues may emerge. Of course, even just using sperm (plenty of that around) and eggs (harder, but by no means impossible, to get in large quantities) to produce your Insta-Army, both RGLNSAV or RGLNBV could cause plenty of mischief.

But again, they don’t exist and — as far as I know — no one is trying to develop them.

3. Clones are not slaves

The slavery issue comes up in the “cloned army” scenario, also in nightmare scenarios such as The Island, wherein — spoilers coming — clones are created to provide replacement parts for evil rich people. At least The Island gets the legalities right — clones are human beings, and human beings are protected by law in most jurisdictions from being held against their will or forced to sacrifice themselves by providing replacement parts for others. So any racket like in The Island would require operating underground. Cloned armies would also have to be created somewhere outside of most legal jurisdictions. Sharing the same genetic code with someone else does not erase or diminish one’s humanity under law, or else we’d have special rules about how we treat identical twins.

There was an episode in the second season of Star Trek: The Next Generation which managed to pull off a hat-trick where these three misconceptions are concerned. The Enterprise encounters a small society that reproduces only by cloning which needs an infusion of fresh blood, as it were. Things quickly get wacky…

The Mariposans ask the Enterprise-D crew for a sample of their DNA, so they could create new clones. The crew refuses, so the Mariposans kidnap Commander William Riker and Doctor Katherine Pulaski to steal their DNA. When Riker and Pulaski find out, they visit the colony’s cloning labs and destroy the new clones.

The clones that Riker and Pulaski kill are adults. They are still in vats, though, and I think they’re bald. The basic idea here seems to be that Riker and Pulaski are perfectly entitled to murder these mostly formed adult human beings because they are

– Exact duplicates of Riker and Pulaski, and therefore in some sense a violation of their right to individuality.

– Not yet conscious. This is never explicitly stated, but the scene where they kill the clones would have been even harder to swallow had the clones opened their eyes and looked scared.

I believe the makers of this episode were attempting to draw some clumsy analogy to abortion. Unfortunately, due to the rapid maturation provided by the vat technology, the Riker and Pulaski clones looked to have been somewhere in the 100th and 120th trimesters, respectively. Either under Federation law, Roe v. Wade has been substantially expanded, or the presumption that one’s clone is simply one’s property to do with as one wishes is a firmly embedded legal principle of the 24th century.

However, under the more primitive and restrictive laws of the 21st century, it’s clear that killing your adult (or infant) clone would land you in jail for murder. And I have a feeling that the “I was protecting my individuality” defense would get you nowhere. Well, maybe you’d have a shot with a California jury, but otherwise…

I’m hardly suggesting that there are no serious legal and ethical issues that must be considered where cloning is concerned. There are. But we can only deal with them seriously when we stop talking about all this nonsense.

Harvard scientists join human cloning race

Research aims to create stem cells for treating blood disease

Harvard-affiliated researchers said Tuesday they have begun efforts to create stem cells by cloning human embryos, joining the race among a small group of scientists in this controversial pursuit.

The work at Children’s Hospital Boston, the main pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is aimed at eventually creating stem cells for treating blood diseases like sickle-cell anemia, leukemia and other blood disorders.

Dr. George Daley, a leading expert in blood diseases, is overseeing the work at the hospital. Daley, an executive committee member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said he had begun experiments but declined to describe the results of his work so far.

Let’s see here: you’ve got cloning, stem cells, and the creation of embryos that will be killed in the process of carrying out the research. Anybody care to guess whether this announcement will generate controversy?

We’ll take it real slow announcing any breakthroughs resulting from this research, bearing in mind what happened last time around.

The improbably named Jennifer Fearing recently penned a tirade against animal cloning. The rant was stimulated by the announcement from South Korean scientists of the first cloned dog, an adorable puppy called Snuppy who is genetically identical to a sweet Afghan hound named Tai. Mistrusting scientific progress that uses animals, Fearing finds the development dark and unsettling.

Ms. Fearful er, Fearing knows that her moral suasion will not prevail, so she and other members of something called Californians Against Pet Cloning are pushing for legislation “to ban the retail sale of cloned and genetically modified pets.” Beyond being paternalistic and misguided, such a stricture is preposterous. All of the more than 150 recognized dog breeds are derived from a wolf-like ancestor. Picture standing side-by-side a timber wolf, a Chihuahua, and a Great Dane, and tell me that’s not genetic modification at work.

The almost supersititous stigma that surrounds cloning of any sort is going to be a tough obstacle to overcome, but I can think of one thing that might do it — the affection that pet owners have for their little friends. Ultimately, I expect that both pet cloning and pet cryonics will be huge industries.

Siegel and Perry are hailing the announcement today in Science by Korean researchers that they have created eleven cloned human embryonic stem cell lines that are matched to eleven individual patients. This achievement comes only 14 months after the same team of Korean researchers led by Woo Suk Hwang created the first cloned human embryo.

The researchers used somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to create these cloned human embryonic stem cell lines. They began with 185 eggs donated by 18 women who produced about 10 eggs per induced superovulation cycle. The researchers removed the nuclei from each egg and inserted skin cell nuclei from each patient into the enucleated eggs. From these 185 eggs, 129 successfully fused with the skin cell nuclei and 31 developed into blastocysts. Eleven different patient matched human embryonic stem cell lines were successfully derived from the 31 blastocysts. The stem cell lines were derived for both males and females and from patients suffering from juvenile diabetes, congenital immunodeficiency disease and spinal cord injuries.

One might wonder why these breakthroughs always seem to come from Korea? Korea has had the lead in stem cell and therapeutic cloning research for some time now. Apparently there is no debate there equivalent to the ongoing ethical struggle that the US is having with this issue. Europe is in much the same boat as the US, with strong government opposition to therapeutic cloning being the norm. In the US, the source of the opposition is primarily religious in nature; in Europe the opposition is more green/Luddite.

Glenn Reynolds has an interesting observation on the potential political fallout, which may apply to leaders in Europe as well as to both political parties in the US (although Glenn mentions the Republicans by name):

The bind for the Republicans is that if stem cell research creates promising treatments or cures, they’ll look like they held them back. And if it doesn’t do so, they’ll be blamed for preventing it.

Reason from Fight Aging! takes a somewhat more pointed approach:

Some of the most promising research into cures for age-related conditions has been held back and underfunded for years in the US. But regular readers know this already; much of the recent news regarding stem cell research has been nothing but politics. It is a great pity that we live in a society that places so little value on individual responsibility, freedom and choice, especially in those areas of human endeavor where the most good could be accomplished. Centralization and socialization of medicine are terrible things; why do we allow the uninformed and unskilled to squander resources and hold life and death decisions over our heads?

The bottom line: politicized medical research is slower, less effective, less efficient medical research. The slower it goes, the more likely you are to suffer and die from an age-related condition that might otherwise have been cured. The slower it goes, the less likely we are to make serious progress towards a cure for the aging process itself. Politicians can do nothing but destroy and delay; they should leave well alone – let those who are willing to work put their talents, unhindered, towards creating longer, healthier lives for all.

If therapeutic cloning is able to deliver on even a small portion of its promised benefits, it’s difficult for me to believe that it won’t become available somewehere (most likely Korea) in the very near future. And I suspect it will eventually be available in Europe and the US as well.

An important confrontation (it’s much more than a debate) lies ahead.

UPDATE: MORE THOUGHTS FROM STEPHEN:

South Korea Does It Again

We learned yesterday that South Korea has taken another giant leap forward in the field of therapeutic cloning. They have produced 11 new stem cell lines, which is a wonderful thing in itself, but these stem cell lines are exact genetic matches for patients who need them.

If you need stem cell therapy – this, currently, is the only way to get exact genetically matching omni-potent stem cells. THE only way. And you’d have to go to South Korea for the treatment.

The South Korean lab that keeps shocking the world with these breakthroughs is manned by brilliant, hard-working scientists. These guys are said to work every day of the year. No breaks…ever. That’s an impressive commitment, but the man-hours that these few scientists can devote to this field – even working every day – is nothing compared to the man-hours the United States could throw at these same problems. If, that is, we made it a priority.

The fact that therapeutic cloning is not a priority in this country can be blamed in large measure on The President’s Council of Bioethics. Not happy that his influence doesn’t extend as far as South Korea, the Council Chair Leon Kass had this to say:

Whatever its technical merit, this research is morally troubling: it creates human embryos solely for research, makes it much easier to produce cloned babies, and exploits women as egg donors not for their benefit.

Kass’ first point: that this development “creates human embryos solely for research” is actually his best argument. Kass’ position that embryos should not be used in research is, no doubt, a product of the belief that human life begins at conception.

If you really believe that the handful of undifferentiated cells in the petri dish is a human, then there is no justification for sacrificing one human to help another human. This position becomes hard to swallow if the human in need is standing next to you begging you to help him, but if you accept that conception marks the arrival of a human, complete in rights if not in form, where none existed the moment before, then the position is at least, logical.

Those who have argued that life begins at conception often point to the fact that conception is the first appearance of the DNA blueprint that will be used to make an individual human. In fact conception does produce DNA that is distinct from the parents, but it is not necessarily the DNA that will go on to make an individual human.

The key battleground is where society says that human life begins.

Clearly, both the sperm and egg are [living human cells] and they have the potential of being part of a new human, but few would offer legal protection to gametes. The crude and hilarious “Every Sperm is Sacred” song is effective satire because almost nobody would adopt that thinking…

Before differentiation a fertilized egg might fail to develop (as occurs when the fertilized egg is unsuccessful in attaching to the uterine wall – this happens about half of the time). Or the fertilized egg might become a single human. It could become two humans in the case of identical twins (natural clones). A fertilized egg might even become part of a human in the rare case of a chimera – where two fertilized eggs develop together into a single embryo.

If a fertilized egg has the potential in nature of being no human, part of a human, one human, or two humans, the destiny of a fertilized egg is objectively undetermined – much like the undetermined nature of the gametes that formed it.

After differentiation, an embryo has crossed an objective medical threshold. The individual that the embryo will develop into is now determined. The same thing cannot be said of the moment of conception.

Differentiation occurs very early in a pregnancy – at about ten days. This is a much more conservative definition of the beginning of human life than abortion-rights advocates would be willing to accept.

A person who accepts differentiation as the beginning of human life can be pro-life (anti-abortion) without the practical inconsistency of being against the research that could save countless other lives. This is not mere situational ethics. This is the sort of critical reexamination of ethics that new technology forces upon us. It should be of no consequence that Kass and company are unhappy with the arrival of this technology. The technology is here and we are going to have to deal with it.

Kass’ second point, that this technology “makes it much easier to produce cloned babies,” is just silly. The automobile made drive-by shootings possible too. The fact that something bad might be done with a technology is an insufficient reason to ban the technology. Particularly where, as here, the potential benefits are so great.

“The South Korean government, which paid for the new study, has made it a criminal offense to implant a cloned embryo into a woman’s uterus,” Dr. Hwang [the head of South Korean group] said. “It should be banned throughout the world,” he added.

I’d have no problem with that. One of me is plenty. Reproductive cloning would presently be unsafe for the child. The risk of birth defects is much too high. Even if that problem were solved, there is the question of why a person would want a clone – organ harvesting perhaps?

Kass’ third point, that this technology “exploits women as egg donors not for their benefit” is also without merit. This argument makes no sense, of course, in those cases where the egg donor is also the beneficiary of the stem cell line. But the argument is worthless in any case.

I’m sure Kass would like to make an analogy between egg donation and prostitution, but you might as well say the same thing of blood donation. If Kass’ problem with egg donation is the pain of the procedure, bone marrow donation is very painful as well. Yet good people donate bone marrow to complete strangers all the time.

Technology will soon render any concern with egg donation moot anyway. Artificial eggs could soon be used in this procedure.

Obviously, the ethical issue involved here could not be more important – the respect for human life. But our respect for human life shouldn’t end at birth. Our society has a duty to the sick and suffering to do all it can for them as long as doing so will not sacrifice human dignity.

South Korea’s accomplishment will enhance human dignity.

A frozen mammoth dug up from the Siberian tundra has been unveiled in central Japan in a preview of the six-month World Exposition, which is expected to draw millions of tourists.

A group of Russian and Japanese scientists hope to clone mammoths from the animal’s remains by using elephant egg cells.

The multimillion-dollar project between Russia and Japan to examine the beast is intended to find out why mammoths became extinct in the Ice Age.

And then this one:

For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

If scientists can isolate proteins from the material, they may be able to learn new details of how dinosaurs lived, said lead researcher Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University.

If the Japanese scientists are able to pull of their ambitious mammoth project, what are the chances that we might get to see an actual living dinosaur one of these days?

I guess that’s still pretty hard to say, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure. They’re definitely going up.

So, for those wondering why I was re-running such an old post, there’s you’re
reason. Thanks for the link, Glenn.

UPDATE: Rand
Simberg has some interesting, related thoughts. Also, check out this interesting essay by Amba.

UPDATE II: Daniel
Moore takes issue with my use of the terms "clone" and "luddite,"
and grasps for a label to stick on "philosophical luddites" such as
myself who espouse:

idiotic assumptions that anyone who has any sort of misgivings about cloning
and stem cells is a luddite

I won’t go into the definition of "clone," as it is being thoroughly
discussed in the comments to Moore’s entry. However, I will take issue with
the above characterization. I don’t think that people who have misgivings about
these matters are luddites; I have a fair share of my own misgivings. Kass has
earned the title because of his consistent
philosophical opposition to life extension, and his apparent
inclination to see that opposition written into law.

Also, he has little quirks like being offended at the sight of people eating
ice cream in public. But that doesn’t make him a luddite. I think the appropriate
term there is "buzzkill."

My Little Bud Grows Up

The Longevity Meme reports on a remarkable achievement by researchers in Korea:

The Next Step in Therapeutic Cloning (Thursday February 12 2004)

As reported by Wired (and in numerous other places), Korean researchers have accomplished the next successful step in therapeutic cloning and stem cell medicine: reliably extracting stem cells from cloned human embryos. As the Wired article says, “a Korean woman now has a set of cells that could one day replace any damaged or diseased cell in her body with little worry of rejection, if researchers can get stem cells to work therapeutically.” The scientists have even managed to create a new stem cell line from this work, which is very good news, given the limited number of lines currently available. A New York Times article provides a good introduction to the medical significance of this advance.

Leon Kass, the Luddite General of the United States, was quick to comment:

‘The age of human cloning has apparently arrived: today, cloned blastocysts for research, tomorrow cloned blastocysts for babymaking,’ he wrote in an e-mail message. ‘In my opinion, and that of the majority of the Council, the only way to prevent this from happening here is for Congress to enact a comprehensive ban or moratorium on all human cloning.’

You know, I’m not really for or against reproductive cloning. There are rational arguments as to why it’s an okay idea, and rational arguments as to why it would cause problems. But this superstituous dread with which Kass approaches the subject is truly astounding to me. He is apparently not upset that a blastocyst was killed (not in this quote, anyway). If that were what bothered him, at least his position would be consistent with the Catholics:

Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director for pro-life activities at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, ‘This is a move toward creating new human lives solely to destroy them in research.’ He termed cloning ‘the ultimate way of treating life as an object, as an instrument to an end.’

I can see the logic of that, even if I don’t agree with it. The Catholics define humanity all the way down to the freshly fertilized zygote. A blastocyst is therefore “human” and it’s wrong to use a “human” for research, not to mention killing it. Agree with it or disagree with it, at least that’s a coherent position.

Contrast it with Kass’ position. His great fear is that someday somebody is going to create one of these blastocysts and not kill it. And yet I bet he would describe himself as being “pro-life.”

Go figure.