Ghanaian scientists condemn human cloning

Two of Ghana's leading scientists have questioned the relevance of human cloning to humanity and called for laws to regulate the activities of "scientists caught up in the new wave of bio-technology revolution".

The Rev Professor Seth Ayettey, Head of the College of Health Sciences which houses all the health training institutions in Accra and Dr Stephen Asante-Poku, a Molecular Biologist at the University Ghana Medical School, both acknowledge the usefulness of scientific knowledge to advance the cause of medical practice but said there must be regulations to prevent abuses.

Rev. Prof. Ayettey, who is a minister of the Presbyterian Church, said the world was witnessing great medical advances, with the potential to artificially create life and predict a person's hereditary dispositions before birth.

"There is the need, however, to deal with the moral and ethical implications of human cloning and bio-technology in general to uphold the sanctity of life."

Some prominent political and religious leaders are caught up in argument over announcements by some European scientists and fertility doctors that they would soon artificially create replicas of human beings, using the latest technology in molecular biology.

France and Germany recently called on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to initiate a debate on drafting a convention forbidding the cloning of humans for the purpose of reproduction.

Prof Ayettey said: "human cloning has no relevance to humanity. "Besides, who do we clone? Do we clone more men or women, famous people with intelligence or beauties and for what purpose? What is the purpose of creating copies of one's self? Wouldn't this create problems of identification?"

Cloning is a scientific process during which cells of a mature organism or donor's cells nucleus is used to reproduce an exact image of that donor.

The end result is an artificially created exact copy of any living being or organism without any sexual activity.

Prof Ayettey said: "even though some scientists do not believe in God, there is still the problem of the unknown to deal with. What about the soul of the cloned human being, and what is its relationship with its maker? And who owns the soul?"

There are arguments that the cloning of human beings would deprive someone of what makes that person an individual; that is tampering with the IQ, the physical appearance, the gender and the sexuality of that individual.

Prof Ayettey said there are: "defects with even normal birth and since the cloning technique is not yet perfect, cloned individuals are more likely to have more abnormalities."

Dr Asante-Poku said scientific knowledge is useful to advance the cause of medical research and practice. "We, however, need to know how to use such knowledge to avoid abuse in the practice of medicine. There must be regulations to govern the activities of scientists involved in molecular biology and bio-tech in general."

Dr Asante-Poku admitted that, "there are benefits to be derived from these medical advances such as the potential benefits of gene therapy and pre-natal screening, but there is the need to govern the use of such technologies.

"For instance, pre-natal screening makes it possible to predict one's disabilities even before birth and with gene therapy some diseases such as sickle cells could easily be handled because defective genes could then be manipulated to treat the disease condition."

However, Dr Asante-Poku said with prenatal screening, the question may then arise about how parents should deal with the knowledge of a pregnancy which could result in the birth of a child who could develop a disease condition."

He said these are some questions that make it necessary to come out with rules to govern some of these sophisticated technological advances.

The announcement in 1997 of the birth of a cloned sheep named Dolly, an exact copy of its mother, sparked world-wide debate over the moral and medical implications of cloning.