Smash hit

At first glance, Wilmut’s position seems simple. Yet when you delve a little deeper, what becomes clear is the ethical labyrinth he has had to negotiate to get to this point, and the heavy moral responsibility that sits on his shoulders. He accepts, for example, that the technology he perfected may well end up being abused to create a cloned human baby. So how difficult is that to live with?

“The physics you are using in your tape recorder are the same physics that blew up two Japanese cities 60 years ago. The first time someone stuck a sharp stone into a stick and made an axe they could have used it to chop firewood and kill animals, which we would have thought of as good, or to kill people, which usually we think of as bad. You can’t split this.”

It is a fair enough argument, but a little too easy. Does it really absolve a scientist such as Wilmut of moral responsibility if it all goes wrong? I ask him if he had had to gird himself morally to protect himself from self-blame, should the worst fears about human cloning be realised. Does the moral dilemma not give him sleepless nights? “No,” he says, “but it does worry me and give me cause for concern.” What gets him by, he says, is his certainty about the good that can come from his research. “I would be very confident that if I could come back in 100 years’ time from now, I would feel the benefits outweighed any potential misuses.”

A world without degenerative disease would undoubtedly be a better place, as would one with a treatment for spinal injury, heart failure, schizophrenia, diabetes and liver damage. But could any benefits really outweigh the disadvantages? Is there anything that could truly compensate for the disturbing consequences for the human condition of creating what would effectively be a new class of person, less unique and less individual than the rest of humanity?

Wilmut pauses before answering. In his reply it is possible to glimpse him as a younger man, when as an idealistic student his ambition was to farm in the developing world. It is also possible to see the mental toughness required for scientists working in this field.

"Sadly there are people in the world right now who are working on different forms of viral infection or biological warfare — that's worse than human cloning," he says. "Any kind of weaponry is worse than human cloning. More people die every day because of a lack of water than died when the Twin Towers came down. Every day." He repeats for emphasis. "Every. Day. And we don't seem to care."

He says he is opposed to a world containing human clones — but he wants us to get ready just in case. "I have said often enough that I don't like the idea of producing a cloned child. I hope it doesn't happen. But if it does it may produce a healthy child born in a slightly different way who will be treated in a slightly different way.

"This is a lot less frightening and a lot less sad than the fact that while I've been speaking to you several children have probably died because they have only dirty water to drink."

So we have to prepare ourselves morally and intellectually for that reality? "Yes. The concern I have about producing a cloned child is that people expect the clone to be like the original. You expect children to be like their parents, like a clone would be. Some people argue that you could actually learn to treat them as individuals, which they would be in every way except the way we approached them."

Does he think society could adapt and cope? "I don't think so," he says. "I worry about that. That's the reason I don't like it. But some people argue that we could learn."

Wilmut appears to be having it both ways, opposing reproductive cloning but at the same time preparing the ground for the unwanted consequences of his scientific success.

As for the raw material of his current research — donated embryos and human eggs — he has a moral position. Consider, he says, the argument put by all-out opponents of cloning. "It's a very simple argument, that an embryo is essentially a human being. And if you believe that, you have to be careful what you do with it.

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