Tuesday, September 12, 2006

In the state of Missouri, a proposed amendment will be on the ballot this November. It states, in part, the following:

1) No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being. The Initiative's definition of human cloning says: "Clone or attempt to clone a human being means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in 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." This definition clearly prohibits implanting a cloned blastocyst into a woman's uterus. In other words, it prohibits the creation of a human version of Dolly the Sheep (i.e., what is sometimes called "reproductive cloning").It also prohibits implanting a cloned blastocyst or embryo in a woman's uterus for any other purpose. For example, it prohibits implanting a cloned blastocyst into a woman's uterus and later using it as source of stem cells or "body parts." The Initiative only allows SCNT technology to be used to copy a patient's cells in a lab dish. This is sometimes called "therapeutic cloning" because it involves copying, or cloning, genetic material from a patient's cell to make lifesaving stem cells that will match the patient's genetic makeup and avoid transplant rejection problems. www.missouricures.com

"Let us freely admit that the procedure used to produce human stem cells for research is cloning, but not in any way part of a process for creating human babies. The distinction should be clear. Society is not yet ready to condone laboratory procreation of humans. The ballot initiative specifically prohibits using embryos produced for research from being used for human procreation." Henry J. Waters, III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune, Columbia, Mo.

Ok, hmmm....It's cloning. It's not cloning. Cloning. Not cloning. Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) is the process that was used to create Dolly and other animals that have been cloned since.So then the question becomes was Dolly a real sheep. She looked like a sheep. Sounded like a sheep. I bet she even smelled like one.

The definition of cloning from Merriam-Webster is: "clone : the aggregate of genetically identical cells or organisms asexually produced by a single progenitor cell or organism b : an individual grown from a single somatic cell or cell nucleus and genetically identical to it c : a group of replicas of all or part of a macromolecule and especially DNA 2 : one that appears to be a copy of an original form...”

According to that definition, Dolly was a real sheep developed from cloning. Likewise, according to that same definition, these embryos will be human clones, genetic duplicates, whether or not they are implanted in a women's uterus. And when the stem cells are harvested, these embryos will be destroyed just like traditional embryos.

Let's look at a definition of cloning from within the medical community. The following are from the KUMed website http://www.kumc.edu/stemcell/.

Cloning: To create a copy. “Therapeutic cloning” creates a line of stem cells genetically identical to the originating cell for use in research. “Reproductive cloning” creates an organism genetically identical to the organism providing the originating cell.

Notice that they say therapeutic cloning creates a line of stem cells. That is a serious misrepresentation made by a member of the scientific community. Nothing makes just stem cells accept stem cells. Stem cells, once harvested, will self- replicate in a petri dish indefinitely. Therapeutic cloning creates an embryo (organism) just like reproductive cloning, from which stem cells then be harvested thus destroying the embryo.

Back to the KUMED website:

Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer: A laboratory procedure that produces a blastocyst by replacing the nucleus of a donated egg, which has not been fertilized, with the nucleus of an ordinary body (somatic) cell (e.g., from a single skin cell), which contains all the genetic information of an adult. While SCNT has been the technique used to clone animals like "Dolly" the sheep, there is no evidence that it could also successfully clone a human due to the increased complexity of the human organism.

Blastocysts produced by a fertilized egg (IVF) and SCNT are considered by many to be fundamentally different, and no SCNT-blastocysts should ever be implanted in a uterus. There is no conception of new life via SCNT."

Wasn't Dolly a separate, individual sheep? Won't these cloned embryos be separate and individual though genetically they are the same as the original? How about twins? They are genetically the same. Yet any parent of twins will tell you that each is his/her own person. How can we be sure that there is no conception of new life when using SCNT. Wasn't Dolly new life? If there were no new life at conception through SCNT, we would not need to differentiate between therapeutic versus reproductive. Reproductive cloning would be a moot point for the purposes of research. If it were not a new life, then one could not successfully implant the cloned embryo into a uterus anyway. Furthermore, if it were not really a new life, how is it that we can harvest embryonic stem cells from it for human use? It has the full DNA sequence of a human being and is groing in a human egg. It just needs time to develop and the right growing environment-just like any embryo. Such was the case with all of us. We all started out as zygotes, then embryos, then fetuses and so on. When you compare therapeutic cloning versus reproductive cloning, you find that the major difference is the intended purpose of the cloning. The procedure is the same as you can see from the above definitions. Therapeutic cloned embryos are intended for medical research and/or treatment. Reproductive cloned embryos are intended for procreation, a seemingly definite no-no in our society. But as long as we are just going to experiment on these cloned embryos, well, then that's alright.

Welcome to sci-fi becomes reality. Eerie isn't it. Cloning human life for the purpose of destroying it through research and medical experimentation is sick. And that is exactly what they want permission to do. In fact, they want our state constitution to guarantee, even protect this practice of human cloning. No matter how they try to redefine it, it is still human cloning. It is immoral, unethical, Hitleresque. Didn't these people learn about WWII in school? What about slavery? Maybe they read Dune too many times and think cloning is cool. Or maybe they didn't watch Star Wars enough. Regardless, in the words of Rygel, this is fahrbot.

K.M. Flanagan