Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The Chicago Tribune needs to get a clue on cloning

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune by Monique Garcia discusses Governor Rod Blagojevich's signing of legislation to allow the public funding of all kinds of stem cell research. The article claims the legislation (SB4) also "bans human cloning."

Unfortunately, the legislation does no such thing. It allows for the public funding of the derivation (the process which kills human embryos) and research on stem cells "from any source, including somatic cell nuclear transplantation." Everyone who knows anything about this topic knows that somatic cell nuclear transplantation (or transfer) is the scientific terminology for cloning.

Here's the part where cloning is supposedly banned:
(a) No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being. For purposes of this Section, "clone or attempt to clone a
human being" means to transfer to a uterus or attempt to transfer to a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus or the birth of a human being.
It's all in the deceptive definitions, isn't it? So cloning isn't cloning but rather it's the transfer of a human being already created by cloning into a womb for the purpose of bringing a cloned child to birth?

Plus, depending on what the Illinois legislature's definition of "human fetus" is, couldn't this language even allow the implantation of a human embryo as long as the purpose of that implantation wasn't to bring the cloned embryo to the stage of fetal development or birth?

Notice how the Tribune article doesn't have a single word from someone opposed to this legislation. It has one sentence about how some groups oppose the legislation.


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