The Therapeutic Cloning Debate

Global Science and Journalism in the Public Sphere

Eric A. Jensen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409429821
• eBook ISBN: 9781317014164
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Exploring the controversy surrounding therapeutic human cloning, this book draws upon data collected from news articles and interviews with journalists to examine the role of mass media in shaping biomedical controversies. With specific reference to the US and the UK as two leading scientific nations grappling with the global issue of therapeutic cloning, together with attention to the important role played by nations in Southeast Asia, this book sheds light on media representations of scientific developments, the unrealistic hype that can surround them, the influence of religion and the potentially harmful imposition of journalistic and nationalist values on the scientific field. Empirically grounded and theoretically innovative, The Therapeutic Cloning Debate will appeal to social scientists across a range of disciplines with interests in science communication, public engagement, cultural and media studies, science politics, science journalism, the sociology of expert knowledge and risk. It will also appeal to scientists, journalists, policymakers and others interested in how news media frame science for the public.

Chapter 1

Introduction

This book articulates the role of news media in the communication of scientific developments, with a particular emphasis on controversial bioscience. The role of journalism in communicating (controversial) science is examined using the case example of the debate surrounding human cloning and its potential therapeutic uses. The book introduces the controversy surrounding therapeutic cloning, using examples from media coverage of this issue to illustrate the book’s assessment of science journalism in the twenty-first century.

Over the past century, modern medicine has effectively eradicated a wide range of once devastating and incurable diseases from large swathes of the globe. Today, modern science offers new hope that there are more cures within reach for some of the most serious diseases of the current century. For millions of people afflicted by Parkinson’s disease, cancer, spinal cord injuries and infertility, biomedical research is a source of unprecedented hope. Indeed, in pursuit of this hope, one of the first executive orders by US President Barack Obama was to reverse the Bush-era ban on federal funding for biomedical research with human embryos, including therapeutic cloning. Obama announced his decision with the hope that such research may ‘cure, some of our most devastating diseases and conditions: to regenerate a severed spinal cord and lift someone from a wheelchair; to spur insulin production and spare a child from a lifetime of needles; to treat Parkinson’s, cancer, heart disease and others that affect millions of Americans and the people who love them’ (Obama, 2009). At the same time, debates over scientific risk and uncertainty increasingly define the public understanding of science in the twenty-first century. According to social theorist Ulrich Beck (1992) and others, contemporary society should be understood as an age of globalised technological risks (one of which may be therapeutic cloning). This ‘risk society’ is shaped by a rise in public scepticism about science rooted in the intrinsic uncertainties of scientific development, including embryo research and human cloning.

Within the context of risk society, science-based controversies over genetically modified foods, cloning and stem cell research have become major flashpoints in global politics, with important implications for the future of contemporary societies. In the case of therapeutic cloning, there is a promise of cures for many debilitating diseases and injuries. However, therapeutic cloning and its more controversial concomitant reproductive cloning have also sparked a prolonged debate over the ethical, legal and social implications of human cloning research. In this debate, the ‘lives’ of early human embryos destroyed by the research are weighed against the hope that it will end the suffering of patients with debilitating illnesses. Although this issue remains a global scientific controversy with ‘hotspots’ in Southeast Asia, Europe and North and South America, this book will focus special attention on the two leading scientific nations in terms of research outputs, the United Kingdom and the United States. I will argue that the movements of scientists, controversy and scientific glory in and out of these nations offers valuable insights for understanding the tense relationship between the globalised nature of contemporary biomedical science and national economic and moral concerns.

While ‘reproductive’ human cloning (cloning for live birth) has been overwhelmingly opposed by governments and publics around the world, ‘therapeutic’ cloning has found a significantly more positive public reception according to both British and American public opinion polls (Evans, 2002b; Nisbet, 2004). Although therapeutic cloning has been highly controversial in the US, it remains legal and has been allocated research funding by a number of individual states with the enthusiastic support of patient groups, scientists and the biotechnology industry. Backed by similar stakeholders, the UK government embraced this technology as a harbinger of hope for patients and the promotion of scientific progress. These outcomes are inextricably intertwined with the communication of this bio-political issue through mass media, policy deliberation and audience discourse.

Also known as ‘medical cloning’, ‘embryo cloning’ or ‘embryonic stem cell research’, therapeutic cloning represents the fusion of two recently developed lines of biomedical research. It combines the somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) technology that created Dolly the sheep in 1996 (Wilmut, et al., 1997) with techniques for deriving embryonic stem cells first published in 1998 (Thomson, et al., 1998). In combination, it was hoped that these technologies could be used to create human embryos genetically identical to the adult patients for use in stem cell treatments. This tissue would be used to avoid immune system rejection. However human embryos would be destroyed in this process, a fact that has fuelled expressions of moral opposition by anti-abortion activists and some religious leaders. Moreover conservative bioethicists such as Leon Kass (2000) and Francis Fukuyama (2002), criticised therapeutic cloning as part of modern biomedicine’s hubristic quest for immortality. They argue that this quest portends a myriad of long-term negative consequences for nearly all aspects of life, ranging from gender and family relations to the very essence of human nature.

Just as therapeutic cloning represents the convergence of mammalian cloning and human embryo research, this hybrid concept also united the ethical concerns from both these scientific fields. Since 1998, therapeutic cloning has occupied a substantial symbolic space each year within science news and Anglo-American politics. It reignited an international debate over the ethical and social implications of allowing the creation and destruction of early human embryos for medical research. This debate had remained largely dormant in the UK since 1990. In the 2004 US Presidential campaign and subsequent political debates, the issue of therapeutic cloning research received a remarkable level of attention. The keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention¹ and numerous mentions by defeated presidential candidate, John Kerry, served to raise the profile of therapeutic cloning on the media and the political agenda. In response the Economist ran the headline ‘The two main presidential candidates go head-to-head over the Petri dish’, demonstrating the high level politicisation of the debate surrounding therapeutic cloning (Anonymous, 2004) Since this high point in political publicity, the issue has periodically returned to the political arena, while maintaining a more consistent presence in news media.

Although the focus of this book is therapeutic cloning, broader notions of human cloning are indelibly imprinted on the debate. Indeed, the genealogy of therapeutic cloning as an idea within the public sphere developed over the course of the twentieth century along intersecting ancestral lines from the biological sciences and the cultural industries. First, the science of therapeutic cloning is based upon the same SCNT technique as reproductive cloning, a technology which dates back to at least the late nineteenth century. Second, the social construction of therapeutic cloning in the public sphere cannot be separated from the long and storied history of the concept of ‘cloning’ in Western culture, a history most enduringly defined by Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

The book’s analysis is underpinned by original research on science journalists and media content, which is primarily reported from Chapter 10 onwards. This research provides a number of reasons for questioning the quality of debate about scientific research and development within mass media. Individual professional journalists have much less power to influence the content and quality of such debate than is often thought. Professional motivations, commercialism, news sources and other factors have a great influence over how science is reported and covered within mass media, which will be demonstrated in this book. The implications of this research for the nature of democratic debated in a mediated political environment are far-reaching and generally negative. However, a realistic understanding of the way in which scientific issues are communicated in the mediated public sphere is an essential precursor to the development of more effective democratic processes.

Book Preview

This book presents the historical, cultural and policy context of the debate over therapeutic cloning, alongside relevant theory and original research analysing news coverage of the issue from 1997 to 2013. The book begins with a discussion of the struggle over terminology in the debate surrounding therapeutic cloning. It then traces the dual scientific and cultural genealogies of therapeutic cloning. Furthermore, it provides a brief historical sketch and assessment of the Anglo-American political context vis-à-vis cloning and scientific development. Next, I discuss key ideas relevant to the development of this scientific controversy, including engaging with current thinking on how publics are engaged with the sciences, the role of scientific risk, the public sphere, science journalism and sources.

Chapters 2 and 3 chart the struggle over terminology in debates surrounding human cloning in both the historical and contemporary era. ‘Cloning’ was first used as a scientific concept in the context of research on asexual plant breeding. However, this concept has undergone considerable semantic and cultural transformations over the years. This study highlights the ways in which different factions jockeyed for position by seeking to define therapeutic cloning in ways that were advantageous to their position. Some therapeutic cloning advocates tried to detach this biomedical technology from the ‘cloning’ label altogether by claiming that cloning human embryos for stem cell therapies is not ‘human cloning’. This approach was aimed at disguising the scientific fact that the same somatic cell nuclear transfer technology is used in both ‘reproductive cloning’ (cloning for live birth) and ‘therapeutic cloning’ (cloning for embryonic stem cells). Meanwhile, opponents of therapeutic cloning sought to conflate ‘therapeutic’ and ‘reproductive’ cloning so that the negative science fiction connotations associated with human cloning would attach to therapeutic cloning.

Chapter 4 provides an account of the development of the therapeutic cloning debate, from Dolly the sheep to the present day. This account reviews the interwoven scientific, social and political aspects of the debate. The chapter proposes that there was a fundamental shift in the therapeutic cloning debate that occurred in early 2004, with South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk’s purported breakthroughs dominating the media debate. Ultimately, Hwang’s averred successes were revealed to be fraudulent and his seminal publications in the flagship journal Science were withdrawn. The repercussions of this high profile scientific scandal continue to reverberate within the aspects of the scientific, media and political fields that were activated by the therapeutic cloning debate. This chapter sets the stage for later discussion of the responsibilities of science journalism in terms of addressing scientific hype, fraud and truth claims.

Chapter 5 places the therapeutic cloning debate in the context of the globalisation of scientific development and the shifting global landscape for the public understanding of science. Scientific development is no longer allowed to progress unquestioned. Rather, the scientific risk is now a much greater concern across the board. The roles of public understanding and perceptions of scientific risk in the therapeutic cloning debate are explored in this chapter.

The role of mass media and the public sphere in scientific controversies such as therapeutic cloning is addressed in Chapter 6. Science journalism in mainstream news media frames science in the mediated public sphere. Chapter 7 discusses how the professional practice of science journalism and the broader context of science in the public sphere affect the issue of therapeutic cloning. Chapter 8 summarises existing empirical research on the topic of media coverage of human cloning and stem cell research. This chapter identifies weaknesses and gaps in this literature, which are addressed by the research underpinning this book.

At this point, the original empirical research conducted for this book moves to centre stage. This research shows that, just as in the UK embryo research debate in the 1980s, patient groups, scientists and politicians deployed a narrative of hope to argue for therapeutic cloning. Chapter 9 identifies how this hope narrative was constructed on the basis of scientific hype, which held up therapeutic cloning as the means by which many of the worst illnesses in contemporary society could be eradicated. However, with the revelation of Hwang’s scientific fraud in late 2005, this hope was temporarily dashed. The symbiotic relationship between science journalists and scientists helped to perpetuate the hype surrounding therapeutic cloning. This cycle of ‘boom and bust’ in the field of biomedical science has important implications for scientists, journalists and publics, which will be examined in this chapter.

Chapter 10 addresses the dystopianism in the therapeutic cloning debate and its role in constructing dualistic hype that served to create a fog of exaggeration around the mediated public debate over this issue. Chapter 11 shows how science fiction in particular emerged as a key vehicle for communicating fears about human cloning and fuelling the dystopian dimension of anti-therapeutic cloning hype. Indeed, the public debate over therapeutic cloning was rife with doomsday scenarios conjuring ‘dreaded risk’, many of which were rooted in cultural works such as Brave New World and Frankenstein. This dystopianism was based in part on eliding the distinction between cloning for live birth and cloning for embryonic stem cell research. However, apocalyptic pronouncements are a recurring feature within public controversies over new developments in the life sciences. This chapter explores whether such scientifically implausible expressions of fear might serve a positive role within certain public sphere contexts. Yet, it is acknowledged that debate based on unrealistic scientific and technological notions can have negative implications for the quality of mediated democratic debate over controversial science.

Chapter 12 articulates the role of scientific nationalism in the therapeutic cloning debate from the very beginning. Metaphors of competition, or a ‘race to the cure’, have been seen in the framing of previous scientific developments, most notably the human genome project. However, the therapeutic cloning debate was defined by a systematic pattern of nationalism extending well beyond the standard media frames of ‘competition’ and ‘conflict’. This pattern of nationalism infused this debate with pernicious anti-cosmopolitan framing, shifting the focus away from the ethics of the scientific technology itself. In this chapter, I briefly identify the key therapeutic cloning events around which nationalist rhetoric clustered during this debate. Across these events, different permutations of scientific nationalism emerged, including the construction of Anglo-American competitive nationalism, the conceptual metaphor of the ‘nation-as-landlord’ and the frame of ‘global risk’ that privileged a ‘Western Alliance’ of established nations over Southeast Asian bioscience.

Chapters 13–17 focus on news sources. Chapter 13 provides an introduction to the role of news sources as the raw materials for news coverage. Chapter 14 identifies a heavy reliance on institutionally recognised scientist sources to provide these raw materials. Such expert sources help ‘fix the parameters of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy’ (Herman and Chomsky, 1988, p. 2). But on what basis are scientists selected as sources of information, analysis and expert commentary? What forms of scientific expertise are employed by the selected sources? What positions and ideas are promoted by scientist sources? The answers to these questions align with the findings of other studies of the political economy of science journalism.

Chapter 15 shows that patient groups were a key source of support for scientific utopianism in the therapeutic cloning debate, providing touching human interest stories of medical suffering and science-based hope. Meanwhile, a grisly discourse describing the destruction of early human embryos interacted with the dystopian science fiction imagery of human cloning to construct scientific dystopianism in this debate. The resulting ‘patient cures versus abortion opposition’ framing of the debate is analysed in this chapter, along with the implications for the public sphere and science policy. Chapter 16 charts the rise of anti-abortion activists within the debate over therapeutic cloning.

Chapter 17 discusses the role of professional ethics experts quoted extensively in the news coverage of therapeutic cloning. The ethical dimensions of the therapeutic cloning debate were constructed by a number of government-sponsored expert committees and by a relatively new profession known as ‘bioethics’. For example, bioethics committees, such as then US President George W. Bush’s Presidential Bioethics Advisory Council (PBAC), were given considerable media attention during the therapeutic cloning debate. This chapter evaluates the role of professional bioethicists in the public debate over therapeutic cloning. In addition, it considers the benefits and limitations of bioethicists increasing role as ‘ethics experts’ with the power to limit the scope of policy and practice debates in both science and medicine.

Chapter 18 identifies a number of key limitations inherent in the practice of contemporary science journalism, which may make the journalistic field an irremediably flawed venue for engaging publics and sciences in pluralistic dialogue and debate. These flaws remain salient despite a shifting media landscape. There is a greater than ever need for reporting and analysis of new scientific developments in a manner that can be critical and independent, holding scientists and scientific institutions to account for their truth claims. The general failure of contemporary journalism to perform this fourth estate function has negative consequences for both science and society within democratic nations.

Finally, methodological details underpinning the empirical research conducted for this book are described in the methodological appendix at the end of the book.

1 This speech received a high level of media attention because it was delivered by conservative US President Ronald Reagan’s son, Ron Reagan.

Chapter 2

The Struggle to Define Therapeutic Cloning

This short chapter addresses the contested concept of therapeutic cloning. The first documented use of the term ‘cloning’ was in the context of asexual plant reproduction (Webber, 1903).¹ S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Struggle to Define Therapeutic Cloning
• 3 Human Cloning Before Dolly
• 4 Epochal Change in the Contemporary Human Cloning Debate
• 5 Therapeutic Cloning Science in the Global Risk Society
• 6 Mediating Scientific Risk in the Public Sphere
• 7 The Role of Science Journalism
• 8 Previous Research on Human Cloning in the Media
• 9 Scientific Utopianism and Balanced Hype
• 10 Scientific Dystopianism, Balanced Hype and Haphazard Hype
• 11 The Role of Science Fiction in Scientific Dystopianism
• 12 Scientific Nationalism
• 13 Sources: The Raw Materials of Science News
• 14 Framing the Science: The Role of Scientists in the Mediated Public Sphere
• 15 Science Politics from Below: Patient Advocates and Anti-abortion Activists Enter the Fray
• 16 Science Politics from Below: Anti-Abortion Groups Ascend as the Leading Opposition
• 17 The Ethical Experts: Professional Bioethicists in the Therapeutic Cloning Debate
• 18 Mediating Public Engagement: Promises and Problems
• 19 Conclusion
• Methodological Appendix
• References
• Index