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Cloning will always be morally corrupt because it requires deliberately creating and destroying thousands (or millions) of human embryos. I suppose it is not the job of journalists to go the extra yards and reveal the 'why', but it bothers me when journalists call something morally corrupt without explaining why. So, I'll say it: exploiting embryonic aged human beings is morally corrupt because it is cannibalism, the conceiving and killing of younger humans for the benefit of older humans. This is the issue over which I parted ways with Court Jester Frist, because he mouthed a conservative Christian value system but in the end defends cannibalism if the humans only reach the embryo age in their lifetime.

The point is made in this excellent article that the greatest hope for stem cell cures is to learn how to take one's own stem cells and back them up to pluripotency. Our bodies are teaming with MAPCs (multipotent adult progenitor cells), stem cells waiting for directions to differentiate into tissue lines. Back in 2000, in essays I wrote for FR discussion, I offered that the best hope for stem cell research was to find out how to back up our own cells to the pluripotent stem cell age/stage then bring the cells forward to differentiate inot the needed tissue lines. At least now the Washington Post is sharing this notion with the general populace. One can only hope and pray the effort is not too late, what with the supposed conservative legislators now supporting cannibalism.