Comments on Secondhand Smoke: Your 24/7 Seminar on Bioethics and the Importance of Being Human: Credit Where Credit is Due: AP Gets Missouri Cloni...

What is the point of only stopping "all human clon...

2007-08-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

What is the point of only stopping "all human cloning" in the narrowest technical sense if you don't support stopping the creation and destruction or even the implantation of genetically modified human embryos?

I've got a proposal and I am asking for your support - just a simple statement of support - to stop genetic engineering and preserve natural conception rights and get equal protections to same-sex couples via civil unions that do not grant conception rights. None of these things should wait until after the election - we need to float this idea and get people talking about it ASAP, before the election, so we know which candidates are free market eugenicists and which candidates believe we should prevent genetic engineering. Don't underestimate your influence on which future happens!

Because the post was not about the substance of th...

2007-08-24T11:28:00.000-07:00

Because the post was not about the substance of the amendment, but the media reporting of it. I haven't gotten to that point, and probably won't due to time until and unless it actually makes the ballot. Moreover, one can support the limited goal of stopping all human cloning without getting into the broader issues that you focus on. Thanks, John.

Why no comment, Wesley? You need to help bring at...

2007-08-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

Why no comment, Wesley? You need to help bring attention to the flaws in this new amendment, which allows creation and destruction and implantation and birth of humans, as long as they are not exact clones of an existing person. Surely you see the flaw? The right way to protect the embryos from destruction is to change the law so that it bans conception of non-egg and sperm embryos, rather than only their implantation in a uterus.

The new law would allow creation and destruction of human lives too, plus it would allow the birth of genetically engineered children.

I smell something very fishy going on here. This ...

2007-08-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

I smell something very fishy going on here. This is deceptive: "the Missouri Constitution currently has confusing language, which allows the same method of cloning that was used to create Dolly the sheep," said Dr. Lori Buffa. Dolly the sheep was created by joining a man's sperm and a woman's egg? She makes it sound like the old language would have allowed the birth of humans, just as Dolly was born.

The fact is, the new language allows for the birth of humans made from genetic engineering, since it narrows down the term cloning to mean "virtually identical genetically", so all they have to do to make a dolly is do SCNT with a slightly modified genome. Just make one change, and everything is allowed, whether for ESCR, where the "not-technically-cloned" embryos are destroyed, or for birth.

The old language would not allow implanting "anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male". That would not have allowed the birth of a Dolly. Why was that language removed from the proposed amendment? Is that what the real purpose of the new amendment is? To make GE and same-sex conception legal again there? (Note it also removed the "of a human male" language, allowing for stem cell derived genetically modified gametes to be produced from someone of either sex.)

Since all they had to do to make A2 stronger was change "implant in a uterus" to "create an embryo", it is very suspicious that they chose to re-write it in a way that allows genetic engineering to occur. And since it allows destruction of near-cloned embryos, it doesn't save any lives. Don't be fooled by this proposal, it is a wolf in sheeps clothing. There are better ways to strengthen A2, if it even needs to be strengthened, since it is looking increasingly like adult stem cells are going to be more useful and ESCR will probably just get abandoned as too unwieldy and exploitive of young women.