In a press conference that included federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, President Barack Obama yesterday in effect continued the Bush administration’s “War on Science” by outlawing human cloning, didn’t he?
No seriously. Why not cloning? If we allow the creation of life and its destruction for scientific advancement, what’s the problem with cloning?
Is it a moral issue? After all the hyperbolic ranting that President Bush was anti-science because he mixed morality with science, isn’t Obama doing the same thing, just moving the line a little further down the field.
It’s likely that for Obama it’s not a morality issue at all but a polling issue. The word “cloning” doesn’t poll well…yet.(Embryonic Therapeutic Organ Replacement therapy or some such thing might poll better later.)
But where are the scientists screaming that Obama’s outlawing of cloning recalls the darkest days of The Inquisition when priests rounded up any scientist who owned a bunson burner or a telescope and burned them alive. By withholding funds for the scientific advancements that opponents call “cloning,” isn’t the Obama administration effectively dragging science back into the Dark Ages?
Hey, Obama has virtually surrendered in the War on Terror so maybe that frees up his administration to declare an all out “War on Science.”
In real terms, what’s the stark moral difference between ESC and cloning? I’m really not seeing one. And if Bush wasn’t allowed to mix morality with science why is Obama not meeting a sense of general outrage from the scientific community for doing the same thing.
Isn’t Obama’s calling cloning “dangerous, profoundly wrong” exhibiting a puritanical resistance to scientific advancements?
Can’t you argue that the world needs cloning? I can see the commercial now. Cue some celebrity with some illness and have him say in dark ominous tones.
“Mr. Obama, why won’t you let science help me? You tell the single mother of four children whose liver is failing that she can’t have access to the latest technology which would offer her a perfectly healthy liver which would likely not be rejected by her own genetically identical body. Tell the 15 year old boy who can’t play soccer anymore because he has asthma that he can’t have new genetically enhanced lungs from a clone.”
If the argument against cloning is their low success rates, the high frequency of genetic mutations, and shorter life spans aren’t those also the exact same arguments for publicly funding it. Because as the science progresses the risks associated with cloning will likely decline and science will be able to clone in a safer manner.
It could be argued that another great reason for public financing is to prevent a situation where wealthy elites have access to expensive clones while the poor will not. The objective of science must be “a clone in every basement,” right? Cloning simply increases the range of “choice” for people. I can see the motto now: “Choice. It’s not just for women, anymore.”
A number of religious organizations may have some hesitancy about clones but clones, as long as they’re never implanted in a woman’s uterus, are not considered in any way human, right? Heck, even Roman Catholic bishops in Connecticut have agreed to administer “contraception” in Catholic hospitals which occurs after fertilization but before implantation.
And if we do allow implantation, perhaps science could swear to keep the clones comfortable on a resort until needed. Hmmm…where could Obama find a resort that’s not being used? I got it. Gitmo.
The whole thing is hypocrisy on parade on the part of the scientists and the White House.
March 11, 2009 at 3:20 am
Wealthy having clones made – sounds like The Island
March 11, 2009 at 3:27 am
Matthew, this post of yours is the blogging equivalent of a towering blocked shot in basketball. “Get that weak s*** outta my face!” as we used to say on the court. Obama’s reasoning here is a pretty limp-wristed layup. You refute it nicely.
I also laughed at the AP story that cited the Talmudic tradition that the embryo is “just water” for the first 40 days…
… EXCEPT THAT IT’S NOT!
How unscientific and irrational can you get? These people who are claiming it’s a religious objection to abortion/ESCR are absolutely the most unscientific and irrational people around. If I converted to rabid atheism tomorrow, it wouldn’t change my opinion (and the fact) that ESCR = cloning = wrong.
March 11, 2009 at 4:04 am
Umm. I would be wary of pushing that line, much as I agree with it, and with you. The problem with pointing out the inconsistencies of these people is that they might take up the other end of the inconsistency.
In some parts of the world, this has already happened.
March 11, 2009 at 4:25 am
Embryonic Parental Regeneration Therapy.
Why should parents have to live the rest of their lives punished by the loss of a child, when the restored Integrity of Science and our federal tax dollars can help them be parents, again? The next dose of Hope & Change.
It's sad, but true. Once they can think of the acceptable terms to call cloning, it will be introduced.
Unwanted Pregnancy, Terminate, Choice, Die with Dignity, Duty to Die, etc.
It almost makes me want to cry for our country and Western Civilization, but instead, I remember we're the Church Militant (and we win) and I say another Rosary.
The FatMan
March 11, 2009 at 9:49 am
Actually, the moral line is quite clear. He has disallowed the cloning of entire human beings, not individual organs. Science wins.
March 11, 2009 at 10:48 am
Cathy,
He’s already funding the destruction of human beings. In the end, God always wins.
March 11, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Cathy,
If there were a way to clone a heart or a liver WITHOUT creating an embryo – i.e., without making a human being (clone) – it might not be objectionable at all. As it is right now, however, there’s no such thing as cloning individual organs.
I’d like to see efforts to clone organs from adult stem cells.
But in any case, this decision was pure politics, and made the error of assuming that what science can do is the final word on what science should be used FOR. Science needs rules of engagement, just as military operations do.
S. Murphy
March 11, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Couldn’t agree with you more but feel compelled to point out that we are already well on the way to being able to grow new livers. Thanks to umbilical cord blood stem cells.
http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2006_10_01_archive.html
We can already grow new bladders in a lab and transplant them into humans using adult stem cells.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040301387.html
Let’s see ESCR do that!
March 11, 2009 at 4:03 pm
An authentic human clone would be really human, whether born of woman or not, right?
March 11, 2009 at 9:55 pm
I really like this post, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
March 11, 2009 at 9:55 pm
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March 12, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Paul-
biologically, yes.
Morally, I’d say yes.
Legally? What are you, crazy? We’re able to lie to ourselves about kids older than my sister’s son was when he was born, say they’re “potential” humans….