ABSTRACT
In 1997 the Dorset ewe Dolly was presented to the world by a group of researchers led by Dr Ian Wilmut at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh (Wilmut et al. 1997). A sheep normally does not give rise to headlines in media around the world, but Dolly did. She was a clone, supposedly a genetic copy of an adult animal. She was produced by taking a cell from the mammary gland of an adult sheep and fusing it with an egg cell from another sheep that had been emptied of the genetic material in the cell core. This produced a fertilised egg that was transferred to a surrogate mother and after a normal pregnancy Dolly was born: the first clone of an adult mammal (Wilmut et al. 1997) – something until then widely believed to be biologically impossible. Dolly was big news. Not only because of the scientific excitement, but also because of
the perspectives her existence brought into focus. If sheep could be cloned, what about humans? The general agreement was that it was only a matter of time before the technical prerequisites to clone humans were available, but that this would be ethically wrong. What was not discussed in the media at that time was, however, what has so far turned out to be the most important use of the technology: cloning of animals for a wide spectrum of purposes. Ten years after the birth of Dolly, cloned animals are beginning to emerge from the labs and have come onto the market in different areas. And whereas there is still almost unanimous agreement that reproductive cloning of humans is ethically unacceptable, the opinions are much more diverse when it comes to animals. This diversity of opinions about animal cloning reflects general trends in discussions concerning other forms of animal biotechnology, the most important of which is the development of genetically modified animals. To gain an overview of these discussions of modern animal biotechnology, it is helpful
to begin with one of the central questions: Are there any ethical issues specifically related to animal biotechnology, or are they the same as may be brought up in relation to traditional animal breeding? This question is almost always raised at talks about animals and bioethics at scientific conferences. ‘Is there anything special, anything new?’ What seems to be implied by those who raise the question is that if the presenter cannot come up with an ethical issue that is exclusive to that particular technology and that no other area raises, then
there is no reason to pay attention to the presentation – it is just the same old problems and concerns and these can be adequately dealt with elsewhere. Sometimes it is even stated that it is unfair to place so much ethical focus on modern animal biotechnology when the concerns raised are so similar to those raised about more traditional ways of animal breeding, ways that are supposedly already socially acceptable. The question about novelty is the background for this article, because it is important
to ask whether there is really anything new under the sun, and perhaps even more important to take note of the conclusions to be drawn from the answer to this question. If there are no ethical issues raised within animal biotechnology that cannot be found, at least to some degree, in other areas of animal use, is it then true that we need no longer concern ourselves with animal biotechnology, since these issues should be dealt with elsewhere – if they have indeed not already been solved? Or could it be that we as a society to a large extent have been ‘un-knowing’1 about what has been going on in farm animal breeding since it developed as a systematic enterprise in the first half of the twentieth century? It could be that animal biotechnology, instead of being redeemed because of its close connection to more traditional technologies, should be the occasion for us to reflect more critically about our use of animals, both in relation to biotechnology and in relation to farm animal breeding and other ways of controlling the biological functions of animals. To answer these questions we will try to give a systematic account of the most pro-
minent concerns as they are expressed in sociological studies about public attitudes towards animal biotechnology and in the literature analysing the ethical issues in the area. Beforehand, however, we discuss the definition of animal biotechnology, and give a brief overview of the key ethical challenges. We then discuss some of these challenges, trying to identify their underlying understanding of animals and we critically discuss the widespread idea that concerns can be divided into science-based concerns and ethically based concerns (see, for instance, National Research Council of the National Academies 2002). In this chapter, all concerns, including the so-called science-based concerns, will be seen as having their roots in assumptions about ethical values. The difference between the two kinds of concerns thus, according to our analysis, is a difference related to values. At the end of the chapter modern biotechnology is discussed in relation to traditional
forms of selective breeding. It is argued that the question about novelty is indeed a meaningful question and that most of the concerns of modern animal biotechnology are not new or radically different from those raised by selective breeding. However, from this observation one cannot conclude that animal biotechnology gives rise to no serious concerns. Rather, the conclusion should be that concerns about modern animal biotechnology might be extended to cover a wider range of issues and should be seen as a reason to develop a serious discussion of what it is ethically acceptable to do to animals.
Animal biotechnology can be defined in a number of ways. The definition used is crucial since it determines what should be considered a biotechnological novelty and what should be considered an established practice: a decision, as noted above, that carries a lot of assumptions into subsequent discussions. Thus some believe that only the new possibilities that have emerged from genetic engineering and cloning technologies should be categorised as animal biotechnology, while others include well-established breeding technologies
such as artificial insemination and even some older breeding practices (US Food and Drug Administration 2006). There are various reasons for including as much, or as little, as possible under the heading ‘animal biotechnology’, but we shall not discuss the merits of the contrasting definitions here. We will just note that the more the new technologies are seen as a natural extension of well-established practices the more plausible the argument that there is little new under the sun becomes – thus, regulation can be based on existing regulation and ethical concerns are no different from those arising from already established technologies – and vice versa. In this article, we arrive at a fairly broad view of animal biotechnology, but we take as our starting point modern biotechnological applications such as genetic engineering and cloning. We are proceeding as outlined in order to demonstrate how the ethical debate about these novel possibilities might shed light on established practices within animal breeding. These established practices can be traced back to the rediscovery of Mendelian theories at the beginning of the twentieth century and the development of modern selective breeding practices from the 1920s onwards (Gjerris et al. 2006). Animal biotechnology has developed rapidly over the past 20 to 25 years. The pro-
duction of genetically modified animals began in the early 1980s, and cloning took off with the experiments by Steen Willadsen in the mid-1980s in which cloned sheep were produced by embryonic cell transfer (Willadsen 1986). However, cloning technology first received public attention in 1997 when Dolly was introduced to the media. Most work within animal biotechnology has been carried out on laboratory mice, rats, sheep and cattle, but more recently these technologies have been adapted – with varying success – to other species such as pigs, goats, horses and cats. The goal of animal cloning is to reproduce as much of the genetic make-up from the
original animal as possible. Ideally, cloning should produce an exact copy. However, genetically modified or ‘transgenic’ animals represent the attempt to use advanced biotechnologies to produce animals with a specific genetic alteration. There are several kinds of transgenic animals. For example, animals may have had their genome modified by having genes knocked out or copied, or they may have had genes not normally found in that species inserted into their genome. These genes can come from another species or may be artificial constructs (Houdebine 2005) Among the species of animals which have been genetically modified are pigs, sheep,
goats, cattle, fish, rabbits and cats. The first and still widely used method for genetic modification is so-called pro-nuclear microinjection, where DNA is injected into the pro-nucleus of an early embryo. However, this method is not very efficient or precise, and a number of other methods for gene-transfer or gene-knockout have been developed. One of these methods makes use of cloning technology. Here, genetic modifications are made on individual cells from a cell-line. Afterwards a genetically modified cell is inserted into an enucleated egg and turned into an embryo by means of the cloning technique. New viral vectors and sperm-mediated DNA transfer that bring the desired genetic material into predesignated areas of the genome are other methodologies being developed. These technologies are likely to make the production of transgenic animals technically more efficient in the future (Robl et al. 2007). Cloning and transgenesis can be used for a number of potential applications. In the
following, we focus on those most usually mentioned in scientific articles on animal biotechnology, some of which are in use already, while others are considered by researchers to be achievable in the light of anticipated scientific and technological expertise. One main type of application is in basic biology and applied biomedical research. Here genetically modified animals are produced to investigate the function of genes and gene
products and to create animals that mimic human diseases such as cancer or Parkinson’s disease. The aim is to facilitate research into these diseases and to test possible treatments (Khanna and Hunter 2005; Emborg 2004; Swanson et al. 2004). Cloning also plays a role in this area, as a tool to produce the GM animals and to study
abnormalities in reproduction (Olsson and Sandøe 2005). Other animals are used as bioreactors that produce biological compounds not naturally occurring in those animals (so-called ‘pharm animals’). Typically a gene of human origin is introduced in the animal genome. This might be done to cause the animal to produce a specific protein in its milk that can be used in producing medicine to cure or alleviate human disease (see Houdebine 2005). For example, the company GTC Biotherapeutics has produced a form of human antithrombin known as ATIII, on the basis of milk from genetically modified goats. This is the first, and so far only, pharmaceutical produced by means of genetically modified animals to be allowed on the market (Choi 2006). A third application involves animals used for production of meat, eggs, milk and other
traditional animal products. The first commercial cloning of farm animals is expected to be for breeding purposes (Meyer 2005). Valuable breeding animals (such as elite bulls) could be cloned and used in breeding strategies to disseminate the most desirable traits. Moreover, animals could perhaps be genetically modified to increase productivity (growth rates, feedstuff utilisation, disease resistance, etc.), to develop new products (leaner meat, functional foods, etc.) or to reduce negative impact on the environment (Kues and Niemann 2004). Finally, there is a range of more or less ‘exotic’ applications of biotechnologies. The
first genetically modified pet, the luminescent aquarium fish GloFishTM, hit the market in 2003. An American company, Genetic Savings and Clone, Inc., offered to save genetic material from pets and clone them later. The company only produced cloned cats and closed down in 2006, but there is reason to expect that when the technologies become more efficient, new companies will open up for business (Gjerris et al. 2006). There is also speculation that cloning may be used to save endangered species or recreate extinct species (Holt et al. 2004). Serious attempts to clone Bos gaurus, an endangered large wild ox, have been made but so far no successful results (in the form of viable animals) have been reported (Lanza et al. 2000). Other more fanciful projects in cloning, for example Tasmanian tigers and mammoths, are frequently reported in the media but no results of this kind have as yet been confirmed. It could be said that the applications of animal biotechnologies such as cloning and
genetic modification are in principle limitless. Any genetically based trait in any living organism can be transferred to another living organism and any living organism can be cloned. To date, there seem to be two things preventing this from taking place: first, it is much more technically complicated than expected. As molecular biology and genetics has advanced, it has become more and more clear that biological systems, at the genetic level, are complex entities where the different parts are integrated into each other and changes induced one place in the system might trigger other possibly unwanted changes elsewhere in the system (e.g. Crawley et al. 1997). In addition, success rates of cloning remain low, and the root of these problems are still poorly understood (Vajta and Gjerris 2006). So, producing an animal with novel traits and/or producing a true clone of any desired animals has proven much harder and much more expensive than initially expected. Furthermore, there has been a grumbling scepticism about the use of biotechnologies
on animals by the public. This has (especially for agricultural applications) placed limits on the usefulness of the technology: there is no reason to make a product that many
consumers will reject because of the production methods. But to say that the public(s) in the western world are sceptical towards animal biotechnology per se is a gross over-simplification. We will therefore qualify this scepticism by examining the findings of studies into public attitudes towards animal biotechnology.
