The Arrival of Human Cloning: It’s here. Don’t get used to it.

Photo Credit: weekly standardHuman cloning is finally here, and it is going to spark a political conflagration…

[A]n international group of scientists announced in the June 6 Cell—a prominent, peer-reviewed scientific journal—that they created scores of cloned human embryos, developing four of them in a dish for about 10 days to the blastocyst stage (about 150-200 cells). This is the stage at which embryos created in vitro are usually implanted if they are to be gestated to birth. However, that was not the purpose of the recent experiments. Instead, the cloned embryos were destroyed and embryonic stem cell lines created—a process sometimes called “therapeutic cloning.” While these scientists have no interest in reproductive cloning, if a cloned baby is ever born, their experiments will have been a big step toward making it possible.

The successful cloning of human beings—whether for research or birth—is momentous: Even if the technique is used only in pursuit of biological knowledge and medical treatments, those will come at the very high ethical price of manufacturing human life for the purpose of harvesting it like a corn crop—that is, for the purpose of destroying it.

Cloning, moreover, is essential to foreseeable endeavors such as the genetic engineering of embryos, the creation of human/animal chimeras, the gestation of cloned fetuses in artificial wombs as a means of obtaining patient-compatible organs, and eventually the birth of cloned babies…

President George W. Bush triggered intense debate by placing minor restrictions on the funding of embryonic stem cell research by the National Institutes of Health. Despite the false claim that Bush had banned embryonic stem cell research, he actually funded it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

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