UCSF Acknowledges Tests on Human Cloning

David_Bloom writes: "The University of California at San Francisco has acknowledged that it has been illegally toying around with human cloning. They had been attempting to create an early-stage human embryo, with the aim of harvesting stem cells for the use to treat patients with disorders such as Parkinson's and heart disease."

Comments

It was legal, and the researcher fled the US

[markwelch]

As noted, the practice is not illegal, and the article also notes that the researcher doing this work has actually left the US in order to continue the research to reduce the risk of having his work quashed. And of course, if it matters, the work was unsuccessful in that the researcher was unable to successfully clone tissue using the methods that were being tested.

I also don't understand the notion that cloning is such an awful thing. "Why doesn't the government just get off our backs?"

In reality, what this is about is religious fervor: don't let cloning happen because some religious fanatics believe it is "unnatural" and defies God. Just like in-vitro fertilization, sperm donation, and surrogate mothers.

For those who fear the creation of new breeds of super-babies, or other nightmares, cloning is NOT the thing to worry about. Genetic engineering is permitted in much more dangerous areas.

The Trouble With Banning

[mmarlett]

The sad thing is not that cloning research is going on but that all the U.S. researchers who are any good at it are likely to leave the United States. That sucks for the U.S. because the end result will be a whole lot of people who know how to do these procedures but don't live here. It's not just a brain drain, but financial drain. And, if you are morally opposed to theraputic cloning, don't forget that if you want to legislate your morals you have to have jurisdiction over the people you want to control. An outright ban will just move these researchers to a country that will let them keep working -- just like the researcher at the top of that article.

Life, or human life?

[benwaggoner]

Is the question really whether life begins, or HUMAN life beings at conception? I don't see too many vegetarian abortion protesters.

We make, appropriately, a distinction between the kind of life we protect (human life), and that we don't. The distinction between them is enormously difficult to parse, without any obvious way to discriminate. PETA certainly hold that most animals deserve protection similar to humans. Others don't.

It has been argued that the capacity to suffer is the defining test, which means, say, protecting a dog is more important than a human in a persistent (irreversible) vegetative state. By that measure, an early stage embryo certainly doesn't qualify.

Now, if it's the POTENTIAL for sentience that matters, then you can claim that the human embryo is more important than, say, the adult chimp. However, does that mean that every unnoticed miscarrage of a 4-week old embryo is as tragic as an adult death? However about every unfertilized egg that goes to waste every 28 days?

The reasons why we don't have any consensus on these issues is that there aren't obvious answers. In the end, they'll be decided like most bioethical questions: by finding pragmatic answers to specific questions.

The questions that actually get answered aren't going to be "Cloning: good or bad." But "this particular model of stem cell treatment for Parkinsons: good or bad."

In the course of medicine, even in the lifetimes of our grandparents, many questions that seemed deeply philosophical turned out to have relatively simple answers. It wasn't long ago that we thought:

Death was synonymous with the heart stopping beating.

Cancer was an inevitable death sentence.

Blood transfusions are horribly unnatural.

Autopsies are horribly unnatural.

Re:Why is it that dogma always opposes science?

[Rev Snow]

But, the point at which life begins cannot be determined objectively; therefore, this must be a theological debate.

Metaphysics != Religion.

I can't establish by empirical experiment what justice is, either, but that doesn't make the criminal justice system a religious institution.