[From the New York Times, 4/11/2002 p. A30]

  President Bush and 40 Nobel Prize winners went head to head
yesterday on the controversial issue of human cloning.  The
president, in a speech, said a promising area of cloning research
should be banned as unethical.  But from our perspective the
Nobelists, who released a letter, held the higher moral ground in
focusing on the great promise of cloning for curing intractable
diseases.

  The warring views on cloning were intended to frame the debate
as the Senate prepares to vote in coming weeksk on what sort of
ban to impose on the cloning of human embryos.  Mr. Bush, siding
with social and religious conservatives, wants to ban all human
cloning for any purpose.  The Nobelists, and this page as well,
would ban reproductive cloning to produce human babies but would
allow cloning of embryonic cell clusters for research and
therapeutic purposes.  The nub of the dispute is whether very
early embryos are human life that should not be destroyed, or
primitive clusters of cells (no bigger than a pinhead) that have
not yet developed human attributes and are thus fit subjects for
research on therapies that could benefit all of humanity.

  Mr. Bush argued that cloning, even for research purposes, is
wrong because it involves the creation of embryos that are then
destroyed to derive stem cells for potential treatments.
Anything less than a total ban on cloning would be unethical, he
proclaimed, because "no human life should be exploited or
extinguished for the benefit of another."  That effectively
defined the cell clusters as human life and declared them
sacrosanct.  Mr. Bush also contended that it would be difficult
to enforce a ban on reproductive cloning while allowing research
cloning, and he called the presumed benefits of research cloning
"highly speculative."

  Our own guess is that the 40 Nobel laureates, whose letter was
released yesterday by the American Society for Cell Biology, have
a better grasp of the science.  They argued that a ban on
research and therapeutic cloning "would impede progress on some
of the most debilitating diseases known to man."  Those ailments
include Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, cardiovascular
diseases, spinal cord injuries and various cancers and
neurological diseases, among others.  Research cloning may help
scientists develop embryonic stem cell treatments that would not
be rejected by the patient's own body. the Nobelists said.  A ban
on this important science, they warned, would send a strong
signal to young researchers that "unfettered and responsible
scientific investigation is not welcome in the United States."

  What was most disturbing about Mr. bush's remarks was their
black-white, even apocalyptic tone.  It was unfair and
irresponsible for him to imply that those who wish to pursue
therapeutic cloning that could benefit millions of suffering
humans are travelling "without an ethical compass into a world we
could live to regret."  The real regret would come if we fail to
pursue some of the most promising medical research spawned by
modern biotechnology.

104 responses total.

in a very odd way, i actually agree with Bush on this. it's not that i think
the research would be beneficial to western medical science, it's just that
i fear how the rich exploiters of this world will use it to their advantage.
i find it ironic that bush would have this fear given how evil i think he is.

i also agree with the nobelists, and i feel that if the stem cell research
is allowed it should be strictly monitored and not 'for sale'.

        The problem with that is that one of the areas the "trickle down"
concept - which Bush Sr. envisioned during a particularly rough flight in Air
Force One's head - is medicine.  Initially, heart transplants were
ridiculously expensive, and only the rich could benefit from them, but
eventually they became considerably cheaper and more reliable, and members
of the general public became able to afford a reprieve from the death sentence
of incurable heart disease.

I fear how the rich exploiters of the world will take advantage of the
Internet for their own purposes, but I think that doesn't make the Internet
a bad thing.  

Almost nobody is actually evil.  Most are misguided.

The rich exploiters will find ways to get it done anyway if it's feasible.

Banning the research will hurt the rest of us.

Nice to hear Bush's wonderfully high-minded morality about exploiting
human lives for someone else's benefit, etc. etc.  Too bad about him
believing that life begins at conception and ends at birth.

I side with the Nobel Prize winners. I don't consider the fertilized
cell different in being a "human life" from  any cell in your appendix,
which we don't think anything of to discard. There is some difference
in genomic control, and consequences if either kind of cell is allowed
to grow, but both are still human life. Since nothing but biology
occurs upon fertilization, I have no reservation in using it in
experimentation, although  it is possible it is *owned*, in which case
the owner decides its fate. The owner should be able to donate it to
artificial implantation, or to science, as they wish. 

Rane, the cell in your appendix is not a genetically unique human organism
as is a zygote.  Where do you draw the line, just out of curiosity?

I agree with the president on this one.  "no human life should be 
exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another."  

re: "Mr. Bush, siding
 with social and religious conservatives, wants to ban all human
 cloning for any purpose."
The NYT needs to be somewhat more thorough in its reporting:
According to USA Today (7/16/01), the  Time's "social and religious
(anti-cloning) conservatives" include: "Richard Hayes, a former Sierra Club
official and supporter of abortion rights who is lobbying for a cloning ban."
"He says, 'This issue is way below the radar screens.  The only ones who have
been paying attention are the religious right and the biotech industry ...
(But) eugenics (genetic engineering) cuts through and renders invalid so many
ideologies. . . Judy Norsigian, a feminist who co-wrote the women's health
book Our Bodies, Ourselves, says cloning requires women to take potentially
dangerous drugs to stimulate egg production. 'It's not a women's issue alone,
but that is a piece of it,' says Norsigian, director of Boston Women's Health
Book Collective.

Re #8:  Neither of a pair of identical twins is a genetically unique
human organism (at least, not until and unless one of them dies).  Does
that mean you can just dispose of one if it suits you, like an appendix?
(That's the logical conclusion of the "genetically unique" logic.)
Please feel free to make an argument for that, I can use a good laugh.

(A human being is defined by a distinct functioning brain, not a distinct
set of genes.  No functioning brain = no human being, regardless of what
genes it shares or does not share with another organism.  So-called
"identical" twins have different teeth, fingerprints, iris and retina
prints, and [the only important difference] distinct brains.)

The entire Bush/Ashcroft/Right-to-Life concept of "human life" is
grossly defective.  This cloning policy is only one result (the absurd
policy on stem-cell research is another, the abortion policy a third).
It must be rejected completely.  We need laws which respect reality,
not religious dogma.

I hope that Congress realizes that this has departed the sphere of
pointless posturing and now is in the realm of things that have real
effects in the here-and-now, effects which a ban on cloning will cause
to be felt by the legislators themselves (as many of them are of an age
where these degenerative diseases begin to strike).

You really do have to wonder how Cheney would feel about a cloned
heart, don't you?

Re #10, and egg production:  No it doesn't, or won't for much 
longer.  Recent developments have shown that a small amount of
ovarian tissue can be made to produce eggs in vitro; you don't
need to give a woman a bunch of hormones (or won't for long),
all you have to do is get an ovarian biopsy.

This has a whole host of applications, of which cloning is only
one.  It's been proven that the ovary is the part of the female
reproductive system which stops working first; women as old as
59 have had children via embryo transfer.  If a woman decided to
freeze a bit of ovary in her teens, she'd be able to have children
through her 50's without risk of defects like Down's Syndrome.
(Headline:  Biotech Beats Biological Clock.)

This position seems remarkably anti-capitalist on the part of Bush.  He's 
aborting an entire realm of potential growth in the American biotech 
industry.

Either that, or he's putting on his conservative act to please the 
religious right with the expectation that the ban will fail, thus 
appeasing the financial constituency.

Re #8: a cell in my appendix (still viable...) has the same complement of
genetic material as does a fertilized ovum. It has, of course,
differentiated, but similar differentiated cells have been used to clone
animals. The distinction between a zygote and an appendix cell is only one
of slight difference in degree, not of kind or potential. The appendix
cell is a complete entity of human life just with its machinery set in
motion for a specific function, but adaptable to other functions. Do you
claim that an appendix cell cannot be induced to develop into a full human
being?  If you do, I think you are wrong. Will a fertilized ovum always
develop into a full human being? Not without some very special
circumstances being provided for it to do so, not unlike the special
circumstances that would have to be provided the appendix cell.

The differences are only biological circumstances, and not of any
"deeper" significance.

It's interesting that the terms "human being" and "individual human organism"
are conflated.  You're right, Russ, that brain activity is a reasonable
benchmark by many standards for defining "human being," but a human organism
in the early stages of its development is still a distinct individual human
organism, even though it may not be a human "being," in the sense of "to be
or not to be."

I'm curious.  Put a human sperm and a human egg cell together and wait 
a few minutes.  Some people feel the result is something so incrediably 
valuable that we should not consider messing with it, even if doing so 
could substantially improve many many human lives.  Why?

Is it a religious "every human life is sacred thing?"

Is it a slippery slope argument?

Or what?

One does not have to be religious to be against destroying human 
lives.  There is no sharp dividing line between a newly conceived fetus 
or a cloned cell in a test tube, and what it may become; a baby, a 
school aged child, eventually an adult.

Indeed, there's no sharp dividing line.  Modern medical science has
giving us new understanding, as well as new challenges in this area, but
the problem is actually quite old, as are the debates.  In the middle
ages, the problem was to know when you could execute a woman convicted
of a capital crime (they had more capital crimes back then, and less
interest in the rights of the innocent).  I think it was quite obvious
even then that changes happened in pregant women even early on, so what
they were looking for for their "dividing line" was when did the unborn
child acquire a "Soul".  I suspect even for modern anti-abortionists
that would be a better question for them to answer than to attempt to
stick to "conception" as their dividing line -- it's quite clear mother
nature doesn't think of conception as being especially magical.

Re #18: that's not an argument for anything. There is no shortage of
potential new zygotes. The world doesn't even need just MORE. There is
still room, here at least, for those that want to produce a baby, school
aged child, and eventually an adult: they know what to do. But that does
not attach a value to an unwanted or surplus or accidental zygote. The
value lies entirely in the decisions of the owner(s) for most of
gestation. 

Would you say there's a difference between an unwanted or surplus or
accidental zygote, versus one brought into existence specifically for the
purpose of ripping it apart for its stem cells?

No, as long as the parts or whole were freely donated. A zygote of a
few cells cannot experience anything, and it is just a biological
entity. There is no cruelty involved (despite your loaded phrasing).

Of course it can't experience anything, there's no nerve cells or brain.  But
it's interesting - I just got done readon "Ender's Shadow" by Orson Scott
Card, and one of the things sort of tangentially mentioned in the book was
the existence of "organ farms" to supply the children of the rich.

re #20: There's no *need* for adult humans.  There are plenty around 
and no potential shortage.  Any street person with no friends -- and 
there are some around -- is valueless in terms of your argument.  They, 
like a fetus, can't take care of themselves but only consume resources, 
produce nothing, and no one cares about them.  Shall we then legalize 
their murder, or use in medical experiments?  I find such utilitarian 
arguments chilling, and entirely irrelevant to my views on either 
cloning or abortion.

There never has been a sharp dividing line between "living" and "dead",
and medical science has been enlarging the gray area every year.  How
many of the "pro-life" arguments should be applied here (but no one seems
to bother...)?

What's the difference between a "one month after conception human being"
that dies due to unsuspected miscarriage and one that dies because its
mom intentionally bought & took a pill that caused a miscarriage?  To
judge by the stated principles of the "pro-life" camp, both are fully
human; to judge by the actions of the "pro-life" camp, the *latter* is
"fully human", the *former* is somewhat less human then a dandruff flake.
This massive mis-match between word and deed convinces me that, *AS A
WHOLE*, the "pro-life" camp is either maliciously lying or massively
deluded about its supposed most basic principle.  Either way, i find it
very hard to take the "pro-life" camp any more seriously that a man who
insists that he is *the* Napoleon Bonaparte.

re #24:  Are you suggesting that the example you provide of a friendless, 
homeless person and that with which you are comparing it, the zygote, are 
identical to you?  A thinking, feeling human being with (theoretical) 
concern for its own existence and the conditions thereof and a clump of 
cells which in and of themselves represent only an indeterminate 
potential for the development of same?

If you do not believe these to be the same thing, then your argument is 
specious.  If you do, then living in your world must be excruciating, 
because if everything is equal to the greatest possible potential it 
represents then you must not be able to do much of anything without 
having to consider the potentialities you are disrupting or destroying.

re #26: No, I was just arguing against the utilitarian view that Rane 
espoused in #20.

Thinking and feeling... is a person in a coma still a person, even if 
he doesn't think or feel at the time?  How about a person in surgery?  
They're both only potentially thinking, feeling beings at the time.

But mostly I'm just rejecting the argument that a zygote is *obviously* 
not human; that it's clearly less than human.  It's not obvious to 
everyone.  It's not obvious to me.  While there is doubt, there is at 
least some reason for some people to consider cloning and abortion to 
be unethical.  It is not an unambiguous issue on any side.  Unless you 
make obvious circular assumptions, then stop thinking about it because 
it's a resolved issue in your mind.

        At what point does a gamete become human, though?  Clearly there are
several stages in the development from sperm and egg cells to humanity, and
if the initially fertilized egg is human, then what of the gametes?

What other said in #26. The utilitarian view is acceptable at the
level of the zygote as it is NOT a developed human being. I have not
applied it to developed human beings, where actually society should
exercise more campassion and support than it does. 

re janc:  " even if doing so
 could substantially improve many many human lives."  And even if doing
so could substantially harm many human lives, I suppose you'd argue?

Re #16:  You do realize that at least 1/2 and as many as 3/4 of all
"distinct individual human organisms" fail to survive to birth, and
that this is entirely due to natural factors?  Whatever forces created
the human race as it is, they did not place much value on zygotes.
That figures; zygotes cost almost nothing to make in biological terms.
(The effort comes with bearing and raising them, not creating them.)
Using expressions like "precious human life" for zygotes is just silly
in the light of the facts.

Today's Ann Arbor News op/ed page has a short piece on the language
used by Bush.  (In relation to the stem-cell debate, he used the word
"compassion" when referring to the treatment of zygotes.  Zygotes!  I
found this absurd at the time, and even more so now; how can one have
compassion for an insensate entity?  It shows a disconnection from
reality.)  Not only does Bush completely buy into this leap of faith
(into the abyss of unreason, in this case); he uses the black/white
rhetoric of the fanatic.  To this, I can say only one thing:

        Mister President, please get a clue!

The fundamental difference between the pro-choice and the anti-choice
positions, best I can tell, boils down to whether you believe that humans are
highly developed animals -- accidents of nature, or that humans are somehow
divinely manifested and fundamentally different from other beings.  

Since this is truly a core perception of the nature of being and the universe,
people rarely change camps.  This particular issue traces so directly from
these divergent beliefs that it seems to me this argument will always be
intractable as long as people in both camps have a voice in society.  The
status quo at any given time will be reflective of who speaks with the loudest
voice (and of course, the most money).

i think what he's doing is supporting the pro-lifers' view with leftist
vocabulary. baye-partisinisum baybie! (i declare wawah, but lyef is prayshus!)

little bitty american zygotes may grow up to be good republican taxpayin
godfearin voters!

Re #18:  You're making a dogmatic assumption there, John.  The
assumption is that "human lives" are present in a Petri dish.
You should have some chain of deduction to support that.

It's the law of the land that a fully-formed, independent human
organism becomes a bag of spare parts when its brain gets smashed
beyond functionality; *not even so-called Right-to-Life has a
problem with this*.  Even if you have some question about the
proper status of a 4-month fetus, there is none about that of a
32-cell blastocyst; once you've admitted that the body which
spilled its brains on the pavement in a motorcycle accident isn't
a human being, you can't sanely argue that a blastocyst is one.

People who've made a zygote in a Petri dish have the option of
implanting it and trying to make a baby, or throwing it down the
drain.  Stem cells seems like a better fate than the drain, and
dis-allowing their use for stem cells is completely inconsistent
with the existing system of medical bequests.

Re #23:  Autografts are vastly superior to allografts.  So, if a
rich person clones a zygote which is used to extract stem cells,
and those stem cells are grown on a scaffold into tissues which
form an organ needed by the rich person, you've got an "organ
farm" (more like a grow-to-order garden, but small difference).
What's the moral or ethical problem here?  Who was hurt?  What
other organism existed that deserved greater consideration than
said rich person's appendix?  (It wasn't even genetically unique.)

Re #25:  Very well-said.  (World ending, film at 11. ;-)

Re #27:  We apply the utilitarian view to the brain-dead, you
know.  Parents often donate the organs of their deceased infants
and toddlers to save other children.  What's the difference?

re #29: But you haven't defined a "developed human being".  Also, *why* 
should society have less compassion for one level of development and 
more for another?

re #34:  My response #18 was not dogmatic.  I said there's no sharp 
dividing line.  There isn't one I can point to.  If you think there is 
one, please explain where it is and why *that* should be considered the 
dividing line.  Without the ability to identify at what point it has to 
be considered a baby, and at what point it can be considered as just 
cell matter, you're not dealing with definitions, you're dealing with 
an emotional issue.  "I don't feel like it's a human, so it isn't."  
There's nothing more to your argument since you can't define what you 
mean by "human" vs. "non-human".

I'm not saying either of you are wrong.  I'm saying you have no more 
facts to back up your positions than the opposition, and your arguments 
are no stronger.  You shouldn't act like they don't have a point.  They 
do have a point, and so do you both.  To pretend otherwise is 
unreasonable.

Re #32:  I don't buy that.  Even if you do subscribe to the "divinely
created" point of view, you cannot escape the fact that zygotes are
formed and discarded with utter abandon.  Even worse:  you have to
accept that dumping zygotes may very well be divine will!  You can
arrive at the Bush/Ashcroft/Right-to-Life position only by completely
disregarding the facts and leaping to conclusions; a position based on
reality has to leave considerable room for doubt, and thus conscience.

*shrug* are zygotes good in omlettes?

*shrug*

Re 335: we've been over that several times. Since there is a continuum
in the development of the fetus from insensate cells to a neonate,
the choice of a point to separate "fully developed" to "not fully
developed" is ours to make by discussion and compromise. That is what
the Supreme Court did in Roe vs Wade. No new information has been
developed that shows an uniquivocal reason for a change in that 
dividing line.  

HEY FOLKS--- YOU REALLY LOVE BEATING A DEAD HORSE?

another item to forget..

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss