MIT Genetics Conference Features Dolly Creator

The methods and morals of cloning took center stage at MIT this weekend, as over 1,000 students, faculty and community members convened for a conference hosted in part by Harvard's Hippocratic Society.

The conference, titled "Genetic Technology and Society," was hosted jointly by MIT and Harvard and featured as its keynote speaker the scientists who set off the recent cloning controversy by creating Dolly the sheep.

U.S Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-Wis.) spoke on the legality of cloning. Sensenbrenner is chair of the House Science Committee and a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

He said one of the government's main concerns with cloning was safety, not morality.

"[Cloning is] immoral only because it is currently--and I stress currently--unsafe," Sensenbrenner said.

Sensenbrenner spoke about government funding for scientific research, mentioning last year's 9.7 percent increase in scientific support.

"Certainly our scientific endeavors deserve better," Sensenbrenner said.

Further practical considerations were presented on Saturday by Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends in Washington, D.C. Rifkin presented concerns of the impact of genetics.

"What does it mean to grow up in a world where you're customized at conception and discriminated favorably or unfavorably in your lifetime based on your genotype?" he said.

"Your generation and your children's generation will see gene wars," he added.

The moral dilemmas posed by cloning then took center stage with.

Park Street Church Associate Minister Rev. Daniel Harrell.

"What we beget is like ourselves while what we make is not," Harrell said. "By virtue of their having been made, [genetically engineered or cloned offspring] would be less than human as we are less than God by our virtue of being made, and not begotten, by God."

Yesterday, Ian Wilmut, a Scottish professor and the researcher, who cloned Dolly, gave the most enigmatic presentation. Wilmut said cloning holds many benefits for science but that human replication could pose a host of problems.

Wilmut cloned "Dolly," a Finn Dorset lamb named after Dolly Parton, in 1996. The original cell was taken from a mammary gland.

Wilmut said he could envision three reasons for cloning: to "treat infertility, buy back lost relatives, and copy a desired person."

He discussed the difficulties in developing a "normal" family and child development when cloning was involved.

"My judgement is it would not be in the interest of the child," Wilmut said. "I think it would generate unacceptable expectations in the parent as to how the child should be."

Wilmut said positive aspects of cloning could include creating pigs with organs more acceptable to human bodies for transplants and using sheep to study cystic fibrosis.

"Of course, you are setting out to make the sheep ill to study the disease," Wilmut said. "This is acceptable provided that the animal gets the same treatment a human [with the disease] would."

Parallel committees from Harvard and MIT began planning this event soon after finishing last year's alternative medicine conference, held at Harvard.

"It actually works very well to have both schools [Harvard and MIT] working in the conference with resources on both sides," said F. Edward Boas '99, the Harvard conference director.

The conference included four panels of speakers discussing medicine, cloning, business and predictions for the future. Four speakers were on each panel.

The conference was free to Harvard and MIT students and cost a small fee for other guests.

The conference was sponsored by Nature Genetics, Genomic Profiling Systems, Kaplan, Bristol-Myers Squibb, TAP Pharmaceuticals, MIT and Harvard.