Ian Wilmut Interview (page: 6 / 6) Pioneer of Cloning	Print Interview

You have talked very specifically about the moral issues raised by your research. Can you define that for us?

Ian Wilmut: Well, the general question that I would ask about anything is, what are the effects of it?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Are the things which may come from something you're thinking of doing beneficial? Very often of course there's a double edge to it, and so it's a question of, does the benefit outweigh any disadvantages that there are? So it is, if you like, a pragmatic judgment that I'm making. And so, if you're thinking of experimenting with animals, that may cause distress and pain to the animal. "Is the distress that you're going to cause justified by the potential benefit in terms of new treatments for human patients?" for example, would be the sort of judgment that we have to make all the time. And, we have to not only make those judgments, but document them to a supervisory system. In terms of human applications of cloning, in terms of application of cloning, essentially the same sort of process. Is this sort of thing which has been thought about beneficial? So that if you're asking the question, for example, "Is it appropriate to think of making a copy of a person?" You have to ask not only, "What is the benefit to the people who are asking for this to be done?" But also, "What's the impact on the child that's going to be produced?" And that last bit I think often gets missed out.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Recently, there has been the suggestion of treating infertility by copying one of a couple and I would usually use my own family as an example, and would suggest that, let's say that we decided -- that we hadn't had children, and so we decided -- to copy me. Now, it so happens that we met at high school, so the child who is of course going to have a different personality is 17, 18 years old, he's going to have a substantial physical resemblance to the young man that my wife fell in love with a long time ago. How's that going to work? How am I going to cope with living with somebody who is very much like me? And, I think actually most of us would find ourselves pretty difficult to live with.

A very distinguished physicist told me how difficult he found it to live in the shadow of an older brother who'd done very well in SAT scores. How is the young man going to cope with living with somebody who has already been there? How is a person like that going to feel about being able to see what's going to happen to them, physically. That's going to have a substantial influence on their personalities. It's not a fair thing to do to a child.

You yourself have drawn a moral line there. If somebody said, "I want to give you all the money in the world to take this to the limit, but I do not want to explore the ethical side of it, what would your reaction be?

Ian Wilmut: I wouldn't do it. My first question would be "Why?" Now, as we think about this more, there may be reasons for doing it and I might say yes. But I am not interested in helping people to copy themselves as a cure for infertility. There is no cause for infertility which can only be cured by cloning. None. All of the other approaches are proven. They're safe, which cloning isn't, and have reasonable track records, from the point of view of the environment that the child had.

I suppose every scientist draws that moral line individually. But when you bring a new technology or discovery into the world, you know that there are individuals who can use it who may draw the moral lines in a different place. A few months ago there was a man in Chicago who was making rather incredible statements about taking this offshore and doing something with it. As one of the people who brought this technology into the world, how do you feel about that?

Ian Wilmut: First of all, he got far more attention than he deserved, because it's nonsense to suggest you can do it at the present time. I actually also think that it's rather sick. If you think that half the pregnancies we start don't make it. A fifth of the lambs that are born alive die within a few days. That's distressing enough if it happens to sheep. If you're talking about a woman having a miscarriage within days of term, of young children dying, I'm sad that people are even thinking about it. That's the immediate safety issue, it's appalling.

I don't think this is a new philosophical position for people to be in. Sadly, each day people in this country and everywhere around the world will be killed by cars, which we all take for granted. We all use them because they're such a contribution to our life.

I think of the analogy of Oppenheimer and the bomb.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ian Wilmut: I don't understand physics very well at all and I think you have to think in terms of the broader area of physics because if it hadn't been Oppenheimer, it would have been somebody else in just the same way that somebody else would have produced a Dolly. Do the disadvantages that come from knowing that we can blow the whole place up outweigh the advantages which come from all of physics? And I would suspect the answer is, no. It is not a new aspect of life to have two-edged swords.

You have talked about cutting back the workload and getting a life again. Are you going to really slow down?

Ian Wilmut: I'm going to do different things. I enjoy traveling, I enjoy talking. I've been really privileged, for the last 15 months or so, to meet a lot of really fascinating people. It's also had the desired effect of attracting interest in the biology, and hopefully will bring in more funding. So I think my function changes slightly now. I want to be in Roslin when the new people arrive and begin developing and using this technique. They will share some of the load of traveling and giving talks. So frankly, I imagine I will work as hard, but in a slightly different way. Spending more time at home, more time in the institute.

There is another clone called Polly now.

Ian Wilmut: Polly was derived from a fetal cell and she has a gene added. When she grows up and lactates, she will produce clotting factor 9, which is one of the proteins needed by hemophiliacs. The value of this in medicine is really only just beginning to be understood. There are a whole range of proteins which are needed to treat disease. We use very large amounts of serum albumin during surgeries and so on, and it could possibly be used out of the milk of cows.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We are starting a project now to try to make genetic changes in pigs, so that they can be used to provide organs for human patients. Now, if you take a pig organ and put it into a human it's destroyed immediately by an immune response, so we have to find a way of making a genetic change in a pig, so that that particular response is prevented. Now, of course, to some people that whole idea is really appalling. And, I think that it's important that there is discussion about this, so that there can be a social judgment for each country as to whether this is an acceptable thing to do.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

Will you be on the front line of the discussion?

Ian Wilmut: I would be very happy to do that, yes. Because I think it now is part of my responsibility. But I think there's a distinction between being involved in the discussion and making the decisions.

Before you go, was there a particular book that influenced you growing up?

Ian Wilmut: I've thought about this a bit and I think the answer is probably no. From my father's father, and from my father himself, I have been interested in philosophy, particularly. I was an undergraduate at Nottingham when Bertrand Russell's autobiography came out. I read that at the time. At much the same time, I read Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge and a number of his other essays. I think his essays are beautiful little vignettes. I read The Razor's Edge when I was working on a farm in Denmark, for summer vacation and enjoyed that.

Did you see yourself in the role of Maugham's hero, going off on his spiritual quest?

Ian Wilmut: I think not. The reason he went off was to understand the world and himself. I think I'm doing that in a different way. My understanding of the world is in biology. I have a busy and a full life in the community that I live in. I do things in the community as well as work, and that's where I find the meaning of life.

People have raised questions about the soul of a person that's been cloned. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Ian Wilmut: I don't believe in the soul, so I find the whole thing difficult to handle. Because you can have genetically identical twins which come about simply by separating the egg. If there is a soul there is a means of handling this particular issue. I don't know what it would be. To me, it's not necessary to, you know, sort of believe in that sort of world, that sort of god. There is enough in the world, if you like, to understand what makes us what we are. And that, I must admit, is what I enjoy contributing to a bit.

Thank you very much. It's been fascinating.

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