From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Feb 28 2003 - 02:16:00 MST
Echoing Reason's comments:
>This sort of stuff really makes me mad. I mean, government agents really
>don't have to *prove* that they can kill a whole bunch of people through the
>machinations of a State and human nature.
February 28, 2003
House Votes to Ban All Human Cloning
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
ASHINGTON, Feb. 27 - Warning that human cloning amounted to a dark
and dangerous step into an unethical realm of science, the House of
Representatives voted today to ban all human-cloning experiments,
whether for baby-making or to create cells that might be used to
treat disease.
The bill, adopted by a vote of 241 to 155, is nearly identical to
one that passed the House in July 2001. It has the strong support of
President Bush but an uncertain future in the Senate.
The measure would make any attempt to clone a human embryo a crime,
punishable by a $1 million fine and up to 10 years in prison, and
would also bar the importing of medical therapies derived from
cloning.
The bill's margin of victory was similar to that of the 2001
legislation, suggesting that members' positions had changed little.
Passage followed the defeat of a less restrictive alternative that
would have banned reproductive cloning but allowed cloning for
research. The vote against that version was 231 to 174, with one
member voting present.
"I'm certainly gratified to see the House continuing to support
banning all forms of human cloning," the chief sponsor of the ban,
Representative Dave Weldon, Republican of Florida, said as the final
vote was drawing to a close. Referring to the Senate, he said,
"Hopefully it will pass, and the president will be able to sign it
into law."
But the measure's fate in the Senate is unclear. There is nearly
universal agreement in Congress that reproductive cloning - the
making of babies that are, in essence, genetic replicas of adults -
is both immoral and unsafe, and should be banned. But there is sharp
disagreement about whether scientists should be permitted to clone
embryos to generate cells that could be used to study or treat a
range of diseases.
The Senate is divided on that question, and it was on that question
that today's debate in the House turned. Arguing that little would
be lost by prohibiting the research, Dr. Weldon, a physician, held
up a white loose-leaf binder on the House floor, saying he had
reviewed 88 medical studies and could not find a single one showing
cloning's potential.
"We're talking about scientists' creating human embryos for the
purpose of exploiting them and destroying them," he said. "There is
no scientific evidence today that this is justifiable."
But the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that cloning does
hold scientific promise, and 40 Nobel laureates have expressed
support for the work. If there is a dearth of scientific evidence,
proponents of the research say, it is only because cloning is in its
infancy, and because there is such political controversy around it
that most researchers are loath to try the experiments.
"Extreme conviction seems to be crowding out understanding here
today," said Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who
has a Ph.D. in physics. "These researchers are not crazed Dr.
Frankensteins. They are people like your neighbors, highly ethical,
who are working hard to relieve suffering, to improve quality of
life. Let's not make them criminals."
At times, the debate sounded more like a college lecture in science
and philosophy than political discourse, with House members quoting
the Bible and medical literature to make their points. At other
times, it sounded like a personal confessional, with lawmakers
disclosing illnesses in their families.
At one point, Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of
Wisconsin, who as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
shepherded the bill on the floor, angrily announced that his wife
had a spinal cord injury, the kind of damage that some say could be
addressed by cloning research. Nonetheless, he said, she supports
his efforts to ban the work.
"There is a moral and ethical issue in this," Mr. Sensenbrenner
said, adding: "Many people want to turn their backs. But in my
family we have to live with it every day and every minute, and we
will until death do us part."
Others argued that it would be immoral not to allow research cloning
to proceed. Representative James C. Greenwood, the Pennsylvania
Republican who sponsored the alternative, said millions of Americans
suffering from diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's might
benefit from cloning experiments.
"The ethical and moral issue here," Mr. Greenwood said, "is, Are we
or are we not willing to allow that science to go forward?"
Advocates for patients said they were disappointed by the vote,
though not surprised.
"The hard-line opponents of scientific and medical research turned
their backs on patients today," said Michael Manganiello, president
of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.
But Cathy Cleaver, an official with the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops, which strongly opposes cloning for any reason,
said, "Today's vote reflects America's rejection of the notion that
human life is a commodity to be created for experimentation."
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" --Calvin
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