The twentieth century has thus far witnessed the medical profession’ s involvement with the process of becoming a parent at a level never seen before in the history of mankind. Doctors are very much part of the reproduction process, from advising on nutrition and child-health, to managing women’s labours in increasingly technological ways, to supervising pregnancy which inc1udes agrowing number of tests and medical procedures, and to controlling fertility itself.
The development of “The Pill” which was widely accepted by the majority of couples marked the beginning of the public acknowledgement of the separation of sex from reproduction. The full extent of medical family planning techniques came to be strongly encouraged, thus promoting the idea that every child should be a wanted child, and indeed a healthy child. Rationally, parents should plan the children’s births and do all they can to ensure that their offsprings develop healthily.
lt would seem that the hitherto private biologicai process embedded within the natural powers of men and women is becoming a medical and technological process that takes place in clinics, hospital and laboratories. We have reached the stage where the very process of conception can be controlled by doctors and scientists, with the would-be parents only playing the role of by-standers. Suffice it is to say that the decision to have a child is not necessarily restricted to the bedroom per se.
The birth of Louise Brown in Lancashire, England on July 25, 1978 marked yet another milestone in the history of reproductive technologies. Miss Brown, fondly referred to as the ‘test-tube baby” was conceived, not inside her mother’s body, but in a petri dish. This was where eggs from her mother were mixed with sperm from the father for fertilization to take place. The technique is termed in-vitro fertilization (lVF) , and the product, ‘test-tube baby’. IVF became well-accepted as a relatively¬risk-free technique and by 1990, there were more than 25,000 ‘test-tube babies’ in the world.
IVF is just one of the many techniques currently applied in order to assist reproduction in childless couples. It is a type of artificial or assisted insemination (AI) procedure. In its simplest form, AI involves collecting of semen sample from the husband, treating the sample in the laboratory, and placing the treated sample into the womb of the wife. These procedures have provided new hope to barren couples throughout the world. The pressure is even more so in societies which consider bearing children a sign of prosperity.
Islamic law maintains the importance of fertility in marriage. The ability to bear children is the foundation of a healthy and happy family. According to a hadith, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) reproached a sterile man for not informing his wife, prior to the marriage, that he was incapable of begetting children. The Prophet (pbuh) instructed the man to “let his wife know and consequently let her choose”. The women was legally justified on the basis of this information, to refuse to remain married to the sterile man. Every man and woman is entitled to a productive marriage, and the law strongly defends this right. Therefore, it is not surprising that infertile Muslim couples have become highly interested in AI as a means of helping them to produce the desired child.
Islamic law is also quite clear on AI. In case whereby the husband’s sperm is artificially transferred to his wife, many Muslims legalists permit this. Bringing about pregnancy by means other than direct sexual contact is not perceived as interference in the Creator’ s acts, nor as contesting God’ s wish and decree. On the contrary, Islam requires that mankind be happy. Artificial insemination is made possible via knowledge bestowed by God. Medicine alone has not been able to produce an egg or semen. It can only improve the way the two unite, after God has created them. If God had not so wished, AI would not have succeeded.
The advent of techniques and drugs that can help induce or influence pregnancy has given doctors and scientist God-like power. The latest of such power is the possibility of providing human clones to barren couples. Ever since the report of a landmark experiment of the successful duplication of a human embryo by Drs. Jerry Hall and Robert Stillman of George Washington University during the American Fertility Society meeting in Montreal in fall 1993, the debate on human cloning has never really ceased. Even though none of the 48 Hall-Stillman cloned embryos survived for more than 6 days, the report managed to create a furore. A spokesman for the Japan Medical Association described the experiment as “unthinkable”. The late French President Fancois Miterrand found himself “horrified”. The Vatican’s L ‘osservatore Romano predicted that the procedure would lead humanity into “a tunnel of madness ” .
Even then, a leading international magazine which made the news its cover story, commented that “the controversy seems, in many ways, unworthy of a hoopla. It is not the Jurassic Park-type cloning many people might think of, in which genetic material from a mature individual- or DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid – the information carrier of a living being] from an extinct dinosaur – is nurtured and grown into a living replica of the original. This is far beyond the reach of today’s science”.
The same science was in fact unstoppable. In less that three years, Dr. Ian Wilmut accomplished that seemingly far fetched task by successfully cloning Dolly, the ewe from Scotland. Dolly became the first mammal ever cloned from a single adult cell. It proved that an adult cell could revert to the embryonic stage and produced a full new being. This was previously thought to be impossible. Yet, Dolly born in July 1996 appeared to be a perfectly healthy animal.
On the feasibility of replicating the same experiment in human, the editorial of Nature, the weekly science-based journal which first reported the findings of Wilmut and co-workers early 1997, postulated that “cloning of human from adults ‘ tissues is likely to be achievable any time from one to ten years from now”. Some scientists even claimed that it would take at least another 20 years for human cloning to happen.
Nevertheless, in the true spirit of science, a scientist has come forward with a rather remarkable proposition. Last week, Richard Seed, a physicist from Chicago, said he wanted to begin human cloning experiments to create babies for infertile couples. “It is my objective to set up a Human Clone Clinic in Greater Chicago, make it a profitable fertility clinic, and when it is profitable, to duplicate it in 10 or 20 other locations around the country, and maybe five or six internationally. We are going to have almost as much knowledge and almost as much power as God, ” Seed was reported to have told the National Public Radio.
Despite some major obstacles to the present techniques of mammalian cloning, the possibility of successfully applying this method to human is very distinct. How does Seed envisage to do this? A cell is taken from the father and its DNA collected. An unfertilized egg is isolated from the mother and the nucleus removed. The free paternal DNA is fused with the enucleated egg cell with a spark of electricity. The gene-carrier DNA, is then programmed by the egg molecules to produce the embryo. The embryo can be groomed to produce multiple cells which are then implanted into the mother’s womb. The individuais that result are clones of the father.
Sounds like science-fiction perhaps. But in fact, science fiction has gone further than that. According to the sci-fi writer Adrian Berry, by the year 2022, human embryos could mature to term in incubators outside the mother’s womb! The possibilities in reproductive biology seem endless and rather scary. Feel like we are indeed going down the tunnel of madness.
Not surprisingly, strong objections to Seed’s contention reverberated from communities around the world. The American President ordered sanctions against the use of federal funds for human cloning research. The Europeans called for a total ban of the project. Religious authorities condemned the move and described it as “one more step toward the breakdown of the sanctity of human life, something similar to abortion” .
Islamic courts have not ruled on cloning. But they are certainly going to be kept busy come the twenty-first century. Hopefully, they would be guided by the reminder of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) that, mankind would, if they wished, become the master of worldly matters. Nevertheless, the knowledge that they master should be used solely for the good of fellow being and not otherwise.