Redstate

Steph asked Allen, on this morning's This Week, if he had changed his position regarding stem cells because he will seek the GOP Presidential nomination in 2008.  Allen responded by stipulating that in his statement, he had come out as opposed to human cloning.

Okey doke.

Boomer Esiason and Dick Durbin also stated their opposition to human cloning this morning.  (Esiason said he's not into "mini-me's" running hither and yon.)

Frankly, more than 90% of elected politicians in Washington oppose cloning.  Even the United Nations takes a tough stance against cloning.

That can't be the line for these guys to toe.  It's not hard at all to take that position.

I'd like to hear those who oppose "reproductive cloning" but support "therapeutic cloning" explain more fully their opposition to the former... it seems it comes down to the "ick" factor more often than not. After all, a clone is simply a younger twin, and I'm guessing they aren't opposed to twins.

I have reservations about cloning, largely because of the ick factor you mention.  I can't articulate exactly why it makes me uncomfortable, but it does-- especially when there are more than a few cells involved and the intent is to carry the clone to term.  There's a hornet's nest of moral and spiritual issues here that are going to be very tough to answer as they present themselves in the coming years.

But I can hold my nose and support therapeutic cloning, simply because of it's potential for saving--and improving the quality of-- a huge number of lives.  The potential good far outweighs my inherent aversion, and the "ick factor" is drastically reduced for me personally when we're dealing in terms of a cloned kidney vs. an entire cloned human being.

Reproductive cloning has no benefits that I can see whatsoever, besides satisfying what must be an intensely vain ego.  It's not as though there's a shortage of human beings on the planet, and I would strongly suggest that those couples who are unable to have kids themselves consider adopting one of the hundreds of thousands of unwanted children up for adoption.

it's potential for saving--and improving the quality of-- a huge number of lives

Except, of course, of those killed.

I'd like to see this explained as well, given that "therapeutic" cloning is anything but therapeutic to the human embryo killed in the process, but reproductive cloning doesn't kill.

I know the contention involved in when a lump of cells achieves the status of "personhood" but I never thought individual human organs would be up for debate.

I could be snarky and add that since you apparently consider every group of functioning cells with human DNA to be a person, I'd head to the police right away and report the deaths of thousands of people at the hands of doctors accross the world today.  (And by people here, I mean swollen apendices, diseased livers, cancer ridden prostates, etc.)

Perhaps you misunderstood what I meant by therapeutic cloning.  There are slippery slope arguments made by some that we will soon have headless, fully-developed cloned human bodies serving as "organ farms".  I think there's even a soon-to-be-released scince fiction thriller about a colony of clones who serve a similar purposein some twisted futuristic world.  This is not what I mean by therapeutic cloning.

The level of therapeutic cloning that I accept as worthwhile is that certain cells could be prompted in a lab to form a certain organ.  Presumably, the cells would be initially cloned from a sick patient who needed said organ/tissue, drastically reducing the chance that the patient's body would reject the new organ.

I suppose you could argue that the initial cells (be they embryonic stem cells, or adult stem cells prodded somehow to behave as ESCs) are entire people.  But then is the kidney that they produce also a person?  Is the person somehow killed in the process of becoming a kidney?

This has been an issue thats stuck with me for quite a while, fertility clinics having hundreds (thousands?) of frozen embryos that have and will again expire and be turned into "medical waste".  I personally say use them, but my ideal situation is one where this would not exist.  So, for those against these and other embryo's being used for research, perhaps something should be done about the many that will be tossed this year, and the next, and so on, then I at least can be content with both the intellectual honesty, and the love of life.  Until that point, I just can't say 'throw them out' without wondering what good could come of this "medical waste".




(Sorry in advance if this was covered elsewhere, I admittedly read the first few lines of the post and flew to comment, it has been on my mind.)


-bro

I think you are talking about nucleonic transfer-- the somatic cell is harvested but is not capable of growing new organ.  Of itself it is nothing but a former body-part destined for decay.  To begin cloning an organ from such a cell one( I believe) needs to take a nucleus from an embryonic cell.  

The primary objection is not that the cloned body-part is a human being or is likely to become one.  It is that the nucleus removed from an embryonic cell has doomed that embryo to death/murder.  In the most likely case, the embryonic (person) will not be allowed to mature to viability which is murder.  In the less likely case, if some ebryonic material is taken from an embryo that is allowed to be born, then that person has been created solely to serve another man (by replacing his kidney).  This is dehumanizing slavery of the worst kind imaginable.

Further (and in line with your slippery slope scenario) since genetic patterns of living organisms are copyright protected, if somebody donates his DNA for the purpose of creating a living thing the courts would have to adjudicate the ownership of the baby-- ownership to the lab? ownership to the original model? guardianship to the original owner? guardianship to the Federal Clone Placement Program?

I am not a biologist.  I has some bio in college so I am prepared to be corrected on technical matters, but the key point for me is always the production of embryos.  Human embryos, however produced, should only be produced to become babies.  They should not be murdered to foster organ replacements by the rich or poor with or without government support.

Is the person somehow killed in the process of becoming a kidney?

And the short answer is: Yes.

In therapeutic cloning, you take a skin or kidney cell (not an embryo) and put its DNA into an unfertilized egg whose DNA has been removed. You bathe it in some chemicals, give it an electrical jolt, bathe it in some calcium, and then it begins to divide into undifferentiated cells. If it were placed into a womb, it would ultimately develop into a baby, maybe (it took 277 tries to make Dolly the cloned sheep).

If you don't put it into a womb, it will never grow into a human being. If you treat it properly, as the previous poster suggested, and give it the right scaffolding structure, it may be possible to have it grow into a kidney (or a heart or skin or any other organ).

Personally, I don't believe that it is proper to call the cloned cell an embryo unless it actually starts developing in somebody's womb.

We went through the ick factor with in vitro fertilization (IVF). Once someone clones a human being, we are going to find out that it's just a baby. It's not going to be a duplicate of it's mother, it's not going to be psychically linked. There are variations on how similar identical twins really are.  Ones born 20 years apart with different maternal environments are likely to be more different than average.

The world faced a similar question little more than fifty years ago.  Was it right to use the possibly profitable results of experiments on human beings unable to consent - and if they were not used, wouldn't the whole lot be nothing more than medical waste?

They made the right decision then - that any profit that could be gained from the experiments in question would be irrevocably tainted.

I wonder if we shall make the same decision today.

the relationship.  Let me try to make my point better.  I think its wrong for these to be tossed out, it would please me greatly if this was able to be prevented, I would support any legistlation to do just that.  However, I don't see this happening, which is where my problem arises.  I want these prolife elected officials to do something about it, they haven't and won't, so if your analogy is correct, I am indeed on the side of using these doomed people/embryos/cells for SOME good purpose, instead of just turning away as they are thrown away/murdered/whatever.
-bro

To me, the analogy that pops into my mind are organ donors.
-bro

For the technical correction.

I still think that if it can grow into a person if it were in a womb, then that makes it a person... or at least close enough to a person that the moral consequences of a  mistake are much greater than the consequences of executing the wrong man after a trial.

Embryonic cells outside a human reproductive system are not human beings any more than a severed limb is.  There is a possibility of developing them into humans, but it is much easier (and much less morally objectionable) to prompt them into kindey cells or liver cells or even brain cells.

Then the question naturaly follows, at what point do these cells--when they are in fact in the womb-- become worthy of personhood.  Is the earliest gamete, rejected by a mother's body 5/6 of the time, actually a legal person?  If these cells are unworthy of personhood outside the womb, does their potential location with a human mother endow them with a special level of protection?  

I would say that an embyro does in fact achieve personhood before birth, but I loathe to determine a specific point at which the transformation takes place.  Stem cells are not human, that much seems sure.  Second trimester embryos may very well be human.  It's a fuzzy line, but I think it's one that reasonable people from both sides should be able to agree on.  I whole-heartedly support a ban on abortion after the second trimester (except in case of the critical health of the mother).  Many reasonable conservatives allow that emergency contraception is not the moral equivalent of baby killing.

The extremist positions on both sides (eg. "there's nothing wrong with partial birth abortions" vs. "a fertilized egg is as human as you or me") need to be cast away.  There's a moderate position here that is not only politically popular with both left and right, but could also save literally hundreds of thousands of lives.

Most fertilized eggs are rejected naturally by the mother.  What steps should we take to protect these cells, if they are in fact human beings?  Should a mother that does not check her menstrual discharge for fertilized gametes be charged with negligent homicide?  What is the difference between doing what we can to protect these so called human beings and doing what we can to protect people in vegatative states, like Teri Schiavo?

Many deer die each fall without being shot.  Should we charge hunters who fail to take the field with cruelty?  

The question is not whether menstural blood contains human beings, the question is how do you decide who is a human and what is property.  

Should the process of creating human beings be used to make property?  

If it is, how long before humans become property?  

When there is profit to be made in defining humans that definition will not serve humanity, but will serve profit.  

Terri Schiavo was prevented from receiving nonspecialized care.  That is already a crime in most states.  We protect people from adverse actions, not from inactions.  The same is true for embryos.  They should be protected from artificial interference, not from inaction.

You say we prevent people from adverse actions, not from inaction.  As I understand it, this is legally incorrect.  Negligent homicide is a crime.  You cannot let your child starve to death and say you are innocent because of inaction.  This is exactly the way that Terri Schiavo died-- were it not for modern medicine Terri would have died long before this year.

And I would disagree that the issue is not whether or not menstural blood contains human beings.  It shouldn't be the issue, IMO, because it detracts from a very valid anti-abortion argument.  But it is the issue raised by many evangelical conservatives, who believe that stem cells are in fact human beings, and that a failure to protect them should therefore be construed as equivalent to abortion.  If humanity begins decisively at conception, then why do we not protect rejected gametes the same way we protect people with arguably less potential for quality of life (eg. Terri Schiavo)?

And thanks, by the way, these are sincere questions.  I don't know when an embryo becomes a human, but it seems as though each party line is so ridiculous and cognitively dissonant that there's no room in either for someone sensible in the middle.

Using doomed people for good purpose.  Ah, memories.

I'm perfectly content to accept my Church's teaching that a new life is created when sperm and egg unite. Implantation is certainly a strong candidate for the official "starting point" and may wind up being a political compromise, but the whole question is really unprovable from a scientific standpoint. "When does life begin" is just not a question that science or statistics can answer, as it is a moral and philosophical question, not a technical one. Science can describe the entire process in great detail for us, but it cannot supply the fundamental values that answer the question.

But with therapeutic cloning, I don't feel compelled to call my cloned cell a new life prior to implantation. The cell reaches a point where more human intervention could either cause it to develop into a human being or cause it to develop into a copy of my liver. Saying that we must stop fiddling with it at the point it becomes capable of becoming a human being with a certain amount of additional intervention gives us no real guidance. The process itself proves that ANY cell in my body, given the proper amount of human intervention, could become a new human being.

on a google search should get you started.

There are a tremendous number of clones that die in utero.  Then many more die while very young and most are abnormal even if they live.  Dolly the sheep aged prematurely, had arthritis, etc.  (Pigs interestingly seem to be an exception to this.)

Additionally, clones do not turn out to look exactly like the cloned individual.

These things are largely due to epigenetic regulation of the genome through DNA methylation.

I don't think it will be helpful to go into it but you should find some basic explanations with the google search.

Beyond that there is no justification for cloning a specific individual except:  1) vanity, 2) harvesting compatible organs.

Most people agree that this is unethical.

the logical conclusion of your position is that in-vitro fertilization techniques are abhorrent and should also be banned because they ultimately produced these children that are doomed to extermination, or even worse, Mengele-style experiments.  

Or am I putting words in your mouth or misinterpreting your logic and thought process?

I have an inbuilt problem of expressing my thoughts in externally, so any confusion is most likely my fault.  But, yes, if the inevitable outcome of invitro is these freezers full of embryo's whos next home will be a medical waste bag, I would like that not to be the case.  Yet as I said before, I don't believe this will ever happen.  So this is just one of the many pet peeves I have, I really don't understand how so many people who consider these embryo's to be sacred enough not to tamper with before they are tossed, but have turned the blind eye to them being tossed for so long, and it seems, still do.
-bro

Again, apologies if my inability to express myself caused this, but you seem to just be stoking the fire of my issue.  Great (seriously), you don't want embryo's used like this,  what is it that you would suggest to stop these thousands (millions by now?) from being thrown out in the future?  
-bro