In February 1997 Ian Wilmut, a Scottish biologist, announced that he had successfully cloned a sheep, Dolly, from the cells of a Finn Dorset ewe that had been dead for six years. The news that mammalian cloning from adult tissue was possible set off an excited debate among scientists, politicians, ethicists, and the general public about the event's implications and prospects for the cloning of a human being. This book surveys the debate, and for the first time presents Ian Wilmut's own thoughts on the possibility of human cloning.
The Human Cloning Debate is edited and introduced by Dr. Glenn McGee of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. In addition to contributions by Wilmut and McGee, there is an authoritative, accessible explanation of the science of cloning by Potter Wickware, editor at the pre-eminent science journal Nature. Other chapters explore cloning's philosophical implications, argue for or against the technology, and present various religious and political perspectives on cloning. The book concludes with a short story by Richard Kadrey that explores creatively how cloning is likely to affect families and human relationships in the (possibly not-too-distant) future.
The Human Cloning Debate is a definitive treatment of one of the most intriguing and controversial issues at the close of the millennium. It presents for the first time in print the reflections of the scientist, Ian Wilmut, who brought the subject to the fore. It is essential for readers interested in issues of public policy, in recent developments in biotechnology, and in the intersection of science and philosophy.
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Dr. McGee, editor of The Human Cloning Debate, is Associate Director for Education of the Penn Center for Bioethics, and Assistant Professor in Penn's School of Medicine. He is a 1998 Atlantic Fellow of the Commonwealth Foundation. Dr. McGee has authored The Perfect Baby: A Pragmatic Approach to Genetics (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), in addition to over fifty articles, 11 reviews, and 7 encyclopedia entries. His comments have appeared in US and international newspapers, and he has discussed cloning, genetics, and bioethics on national news programs such as CNN, Charlie Rose, and PBS' Jim Lehrer News Hour.
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Glenn Edwards McGee is one of the best known bioethicists in the world. He is the John B. Francis Endowed Chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics, and the Editor in Chief of The American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB), the highest impact bioethics, health services, health economics or health law journal in the English language [ISI Impact Factor of 4.37], and heads the new AJOB family of Journals, including AJOB Primary Research and AJOB Neuroscience. He has served as a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania (1995-2005), UMass, and other institutions and held tenured professorships in medicine and medical ethics and two endowed chairs. Glenn received his Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University and his B.A. at Baylor, where he was named Outstanding Young Alumnus in 2000, and one of the "top 150 graduates of all time" in 2008. Glenn was named one of the "10 most influential people in the New York Capital" in 2008, and was named to the top 40 under 40 in both Albany (2007) and Philadelphia (2004). Seed magazine described him in 2004 as "America's most imaginative young academic." Science noted in 2007 that Dr. McGee's work was one of the prime reasons for the entry of Upstate New York onto the radar screen of prestigious biomedicine.
Dr. McGee has been quoted about his research, which focuses on the family, genetics and reproduction, in most world newspapers. He has been a guest on most U.S. national television and radio news programs, such as Today, Fresh Air, Oprah, Nightline, and ABC World News Tonight, and has co-authored with a number of clinical and scientific luminaries such as Dr. Ruth, Stanley Greenspan, and Ian Wilmut, cloner of Dolly. He is a commentator for MSNBC News, for whom he authored a column from 2000-2003, and he has authored a monthly column from 2005-2007 for The Scientist, the most widely read magazine for scientists, as well as a syndicated column from 2005-2007 in a Hearst newspaper.
Dr. McGee's recent work has focused on ethical issues in autism, but he has authored more than 150 articles on a number of issues in bioethics for medical, legal, business and scientific journals, such as Science, Nature Medicine, and JAMA. His books include Who Owns Life?, Pragmatic Bioethics, The Human Cloning Debate, The Perfect Baby, and most recently Beyond Genetics, a New York Times bestseller about biotechnology and society. His work has ranged widely across many issues and has been widely cited. It has included a number of articles whose influence on the field of bioethics is acclaimed uniformly, including work in the areas of compensation of research subjects, models for parenting and enhancement, a pragmatic theory of bioethics, the patenting and sale of biological materials, ethical issues in tissue and gene banks, and ethical issues in stem cell research. He has received more than $6 million in grant funding from the Greenwall Foundation, the US Department of Education, National Institutes of Health, Haas Foundation and others.
Dr. McGee is very active in public policy. He has co-authored the text that became bills or stem cell legislation in four states, cloning legislation in seven, and has spoken for kings and presidents in eight nations on stem cell research including Dubai. Dr. McGee has delivered more than 80 named or endowed lectureships around the world, and hundreds of major lectures. He has testified before the House and Senate and multiple committees of a number of states in the U.S.. He has taught bioethics to incoming members of the U.S. Congress and teaches workshops on bioethics for the Association of Chief Justices of the US Courts of Appeals. He has served on the FDA Panel on Molecular and Genetic Devices, charged with evaluating all genetic tests and devices. He was the American external evaluator of all genetics and policy programs for the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council in 2007. In 2006 Dr. McGee organized "Bioethics and Politics," the first national conference to bring together conservative and liberal thinkers in biomedical ethics, hailed as "the most important bioethics conference in 25 years" by the then ASBH President. He has been elected to the boards of directors of several foundations and organizations including Planned Parenthood and Chair of the ethics committee of the nation's largest stem cell company. He was hailed by the New York Times and by Harvard University Project Zero for his creating an undergraduate class in which students must submit fully articulate proposed legislation in bioethics to their home state government in order to receive an "A."
Dr. McGee is the acknowledge pioneer and leader in electronic outreach in bioethics. For example, in a joint effort led by Dr. McGee with Apple Computer and Google, he and his colleague Dr. Summer Johnson developed the most successful online graduate program in bioethics using technologies such as Apple's iTunes University and bioethics.net, the first bioethics website (which he founded in 1994). Glenn has three sons, Ethan, Austin and Aidan, and lives in Kansas City, Missouri.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 starsExcellent and Engaging, October 30, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: The Human Cloning Debate (Paperback)
We looked at several cloning books for our coffeehouse conversations series. This was the only one with good science as well as provocative ethics material. The article by Art Caplan and the religious material are excellent. This is the only book with an article by cloning scientists in it, and I found Ian Wilmut's perspective on the difference between adoption and cloning to be fascinating.
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"The Human Cloning Debate" is the most informative book have read this year. The essays are fairly well balanced although there are more that are opposed than in favor. But, there are probably more people opposed to human cloning than are in favor. At any rate this is an excellent book.
There are several really good layman's descriptions of exactly what the biological results of cloning are. Big surprise, it is not what the media have led us to believe. On the other hand knowing the exact results does not seem to change the preponderance of opinion one way or the other.
One of the best essays in the book for describing the science was written by Phillip Kitcher, although I think the conclusions he reached were totally off base. He wrote "Reality is much more sobering, and it is a good idea to preface debates about the morality of human cloning with a clear understanding of the scientific facts" To many of us forced our ideas about cloning before we knew the facts.
Perhaps the whole debate was summed up in a single sentence written by Jonathan R. Cohen n his essay "Cloning in Jewish Thought". "Ultimately, cloning challenges us to consider how important our genetic structure is to our sense of self."
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the ethical debate surrounding cloning.
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This is a thought-provoking collection of essays by 25 contributors, pro- and anti-cloning, scientists, doctors, academics, researchers, journalists and the odd US President. The most mind-changing essay for this reviewer was Ronald Bailey's `Cloning babies is not inherently immoral'.
Throughout history, some have violently opposed scientific developments. For example, Guardian columnist Jeremy Rifkin described biotechnology as `a form of annihilation every bit as deadly as nuclear holocaust, and even more profound'. This dispute between science and anti-science, progress and reaction, the materialist and idealist philosophies, can never be resolved. It is a fundamental philosophic divide that cannot be bridged. One or other must prevail.
The argument that we must wait for a consensus to emerge is reactionary, for this would mean waiting forever. No amount of additional debate can ever win round the opposition to progress, because that opposition is entrenched behind ramparts of dogma; faith-based, it is impervious to evidence and reason.
Presidential calls for a moratorium are prevarication. Similarly, the search for absolute safety, like all searches for absolutes, is a delusion, which makes the precautionary principle another recipe for stasis.
Some who oppose cloning opposed In Vitro Fertilisation earlier. Possibly one million babies have been born through IVF since 1978. This safe and beneficial procedure arose from decades of refining techniques in a variety of animals. Safe cloning will similarly result from animal research: a ban on research would prevent work into making cloning safe.
In Germany the government has banned all research work on embryos, so Germany makes no contribution and has no influence on this matter. Britain's parliament passed a law that regulates therapeutic cloning, but unfortunately bans all efforts at reproductive cloning.
Fear of biotechnology has done great harm, because technological stagnation poses greater risks than technological innovation. Banning stem cell research or research into reproductive cloning would prevent many promising developments in medical research; it could drive research to countries less equipped to balance safety with development. The biotechnology revolution has already brought enormous benefits, IVF for instance, and will bring many more, but only if we encourage and support research into cloning.
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