Harvard to Clone Human Embryos?

Lifix writes ""Harvard University scientists have asked the university's ethical review board for permission to produce cloned human embryos for disease research, potentially becoming the first researchers in the nation to wade into a divisive area of study that has become a presidential campaign issue."

Comments

Just Don't!

[j.leidner]

They article should distinguish better between stem cell research, where "spurious/superfluous embryos are discarded" (human embryos killed without their consent, i.e. technically this is murder) and cloning. The title suggests the latter, but the article is more about the former. While cloning sounds scary (due to its sci-fi legacy), stem cell research _is_ scary, not in itself, but just because in its course human embryos get killed on a daily basis (although some few labs freeze them and keep them, in which case I can't be opposed, of course).

Rgarding stem cell research people should really wake up about the language keen researchers are using. Considering an instance of human life to be "superfluous" is very dangerous and reminds me (being German and thus carrying special responsibility in this matter) of the Nazi's language, who declared handicapped people and Jews "unworthy" life in order to create a pretext to extinguish them. It is wrong to re-define what a human is in order to be able to destroy it. I don't want to equate stem cell research with the darkest chapter of German history here, but as a linguist the striking similarity of the euphemisms used in both cases in the media is just appaling to me, just check for yourself.

The problem, of course, is ABSTRACTION: lay people who read these papers only hear "blabla ... cure illness ... blabla stem cell ... blabla... " and get to think "oh, sounds useful" rather than trying to imagine that a little embryo could basically have been _them_, just at a very early age! You don't want to BE that embryo that isn't needed by researchers and gets 'discarded'.

Moving on from ethics (what you should do) to a more scientific note (what you can do, instead), there seem to be alternative proposals around that are equally promosing as stem cell research, but do not require that embyos get created that are not raised:

Dr Charli Kruse and his team at the Institute for Medical Molecular Biology at the University of Lübeck has been successful in developing a new process which has enabled him to isolate cells from various animal and human tissues which have the properties of pluripotent adult stem cells. (just Google for the guy to get more info)

AFAIK, they have even patented their method by now.

So, please, dear researchers in Harvard, reconsider!

[Greetings from Edinburgh, where Dolly was cloned, and where _sadly_ stem cell research is not illegal at the moment.]

Bush admin pushing to make it completely illegal

[mkcmkc]

Ironically, the Bush administration is pushing the UN to make it completely illegal.

Mike