Free Republic

Safeguarding Human Life: The Very BeginningIntroductionLiving in a culture which has lost its fundamental moral anchor, we should not be surprised at the attacks on human life, at all stages of development, in our nation. On the contrary, we must be vigilant in promoting the respect for human life, safeguarding the life of every brother and sister from the moment of inception to the moment of natural death. During the coming months, we will face a particular challenge in safeguarding human life at its very beginning. Proponents of human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research are proposing an amendment to the...

A scandal has erupted in South Korea over human-cloning researcher Woo Suk Hwang, bringing into sharp relief some questions about the “therapeutic cloning” agenda that have been ignored for too long. In February 2004, scientific colleagues hailed Dr. Hwang as the first researcher to prove he had used the “somatic-cell-nuclear-transfer” technique (the same technique used to clone “Dolly” the sheep) to create cloned human embryos. That first effort, starting with 242 human eggs donated by 16 women, produced 30 embryos that survived to the “blastocyst” (one-week old) stage, and yielded just one embryonic-stem-cell line. By May 2005 he had improved...

Recommendation on Cloning, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, and Human Genome Manipulation. We believe that all human beings have the right to life and that no discrimination can be made between which human lives deserve legal protection from killing by others and which do not, except when it is necessary to save the life of one human being that is endangered by another. We believe that all embryos of human origin are members of the species Homo sapiens, that the embryo is a stage in the development of a member of the species rather than something that is “pre-human,” regardless of...

As a South Korean scientist defends against mounting accusations that he falsified evidence in a breakthrough stem cell study, researchers in California said the controversy has caused significant damage to a promising and fledgling field. Doubts about Hwang Woo-suk's claims that he cloned human cells to create embryonic stem cells have made scientists wonder whether the prospect might remain elusive for years. Researchers and doctors hope to use this process to genetically tailor stem cells for patients suffering from such diseases as Parkinson's, diabetes and multiple sclerosis. "It's a black eye on the whole world of science," Richard Murphy, president...

HANOVER, N.H.When President Bush convened his advisory panel on bioethics in January, he told those of us serving on it to engage in that age-old technique of intellectual exploration called debate. "That's what I want," he said. "You haven't heard a debate until you have heard Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld go at it." So it was a surprise when, on April 10, the president announced his decision to ban cloning of all kinds. His opinions appeared fully formed even though our panel has yet to prepare a final report and will be voting on the crucial point of biomedical...

Forget the old stem-cell research debate--laws in New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, and California have moved the goal posts into brave new territory.EVER SINCE President Bush limited federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research to existing cell lines, the mainstream media has obsessed about the perpetual political campaign to overturn his policy. But this is a mere dustup, a tempest in a teapot compared to the far more consequential story begging to be told of the radical and ambitious political agenda being pursued furiously by Big Biotech at the state level. Back in those quaint old days of 2001, biotechnologists told us...

Cloning, defined according to STEADMAN’S MEDICAL DICTIONARY, 24th edition, page 289, is: “The transplantation of a nucleus from a somatic cell to an ovum, which then develops into an embryo; many identical embryos could thus be reproduced by asexual reproduction.” Higher mammal cloning attempts have been costly and difficult, however, human cloning does represent a challenge that has never been faced before by society, and this challenge needs truthful airing, before the science is applied broadly for any and all medical marvels which may be implied from the techniques. The term ‘cloning’ may also be used to identify the process...

"I would find it difficult to look at myself in the mirror if I didn't take a stand against this disingenuous proposition," says Academy Award-winning director Mel Gibson in an interview with National Review Online. Last week, Gibson publicly joined the campaign against Proposition 71 (the California Stem Cells Research and Cures/Bond Act), a $3-6 billion California referendum to fund embryonic-stem-cell research and human cloning. Under the false promise of panacea cures, Proposition 71 would also create a constitutional "right" to conduct human-cloning research. In addition to his concern for the sanctity of human life, Gibson offers frugal common-sense points...

The Senate will be considering soon the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, S245. Contact your senators! What was once the stuff of science fiction now confronts us. Cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, is among the most challenging innovations of biotechnology, for it could redefine what it means to be a member of the human family. Cloning is the process of creating identical genetic replicas. Human cloning is the manufacture of a human being by extracting the nucleus from an egg, injecting a cell containing DNA from the donor, and then giving the egg a shock of electricity to stimulate cell...

I am a scientist, a human embryologist. I have spent a career in a "publish or perish" profession using a great deal of that time writing grants, hoping to get some funded to keep a research program going, as well as teaching, mostly medical students. But in 1989 I came to the conclusion that the science of Human Embryology was being rewritten according to political correctness. It was then that I decided to try to correct the revisions. Abortion, partial birth abortion, in-vitro fertilization, human fetal research, human embryo research, cloning and stem cell research are all core issues of...

Here Come the Jersey Clones A devastating bill inches toward law. The U.S. Congress remains practically agnostic on human cloning. Or so its inaction suggests. A bill sits in the House of Representatives waiting to face debate. A Senate bill sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback, too, waits in the wings. The president issued a challenge to the legislative branch to get moving during his State of the Union address last week, and to get moving toward a total prohibition on all human cloning — not some half-baked ban that would, in the end, let the clone creation march onward anyway;...

In 1995, after the accident which left him paralysed, Christopher Reeve said he wanted to be on his feet by his 50th birthday. That's next week, and although he has made amazing progress, he won't be standing - and for that, he says, George Bush must share the blame. He tells Oliver Burkeman why Waking up isn't as tough as it used to be. For years after the accident, Christopher Reeve's eyes would snap open at six and, in the morning stillness, with Dana Morosini, his wife, still asleep at his side, he'd have to run through it all again...

On July 10, 2002 the President's Council on Bioethics, under the chairmanship of Leon R. Kass of the University of Chicago, submitted to President George W. Bush a Report entitled Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, in which the Council fell short of recommending the total ban on human cloning which the president had strongly called for. A month earlier, in mid-June, it had become clear that the US Senate would not enact-would not even debate-the bill sponsored by Kansas Senator Sam Brownback that would have prohibited all human cloning. Almost a year earlier the House of Representatives...

Behaviorally speaking, there's little difference between a newborn baby and a32-week-old fetus. A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat. The abortion debate may never be the same. The scene never fails to give goose bumps: the baby, just seconds old and still dewy from the womb, is lifted into the arms of its exhausted but blissful parents. They gaze adoringly as their new child stretches and squirms, scrunches its mouth and opens its eyes. To anyone watching this tender vignette, the message is unmistakable. Birth is the beginning...

On February 5th the issue of cloning heated up. ...The controversy of life's sanctity versus its utility was starkly illustrated on Wednesday this week, when Christian leaders who oppose cloning met in Washington, D.C., to sign The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World: A Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity. Later that day, at a separate press conference, U.S. senators announced legislation that would allow cloning of human embryos only to extract their stem cells, and not to allow them to develop until birth. CWA President Sandy Rios, along with Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship, James Dobson of...

In February 2004, Woo--Suk Hwang made world headlines when he claimed to have cloned human embryos using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and then to have derived a line of stem cells from the embryos that could be used for medical research. Enthusiasm for this first "successful" experiment in human cloning, published in the prestigious peer--reviewed journal Science, was tempered by the inefficiency of the process: It took 242 human eggs to get just one embryonic stem cell line.That problem seemed solved when, last May, Hwang published another article in Science asserting that he had again successfully...