President Obama is going to reverse the Bush administration’s block of federal funds being used for stem cell research because the prohibition represented “…a false choice between sound science and moral values…”
However, he says, we won’t ever clone human beings, because “…It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.”
I don’t understand this objection. How is it “profoundly wrong” to contemplate the cloning of human beings? Isn’t that statement, too, a false choice between sound science and moral values?
Well, he’s (likely) right on the “dangerous” part, at least at this point. Cloning humans would likely lead to fairly serious genetic or other abnormalities in many cases for each successful clone produced. As to “profoundly wrong”, that’s a judgment call of course, but you could say that a procedure that would likely result in many non viable, diseased or abnormal people for each seemingly healthy person produced is “profoundly wrong”.
It’s also largely politic speak to pre-answer the false “point” that ESC research will lead to human cloning. Apparently the “human-animal hybrid” bullshit is so off the wall that not even the nuttiest right wingers believe it. The cloning objection is a little more grounded in reality, so it was addressed.
The cloning objection is quite soundly based. Modern genetics advises that two sets of genetic input have the advantage of “canceling out” defective genetic instructions, it is inadvisable for the same reason that mingling genes between very close relations is inadvisable.
There are very good reasons to proceed with stem cell research, it may have enormous medical potential. Cloning animals may teach us useful things about genetic defects, and how to overcome (if not reverse) their unfortunate effects. Cloning people does not have sufficient advantage over cloning animals as an investigatory technique.
It may well be argued that the repugnance for cloning humans (which I, more or less, share) is not entirely based in rational judgment. But given such repugnance exists and the lack of a compelling need to go down that road, I see no good reason to struggle over the moral issues of the unnecessary. Its tough enough dealing with things we need to do, without worrying about extraneous issues.
Ever is a very long time. In fact it’s more time than Obama can vouch for. That leads me to think that the president probably just added that bit as a bone for people who would like to claim that Obama supports playing God with the human genome.
I’m not sure I understand this objection, but I’m no scientist.
It seems to me that cloning, if undertaken, wouldn’t simply be a slap-dash Clones-R-Us approach of indiscriminate cloning everything that moves. Cloning when genetic analysis indicates it’s advisable, or to produce spare parts for people in need, sidesteps this argument of yours.
I agree.
Why not? People have genes that animals don’t. Many diseases are gentically based and not shared by animals.
Excuse me, but this seems to be, “I don’t find stem cell harvesting repugnant, so those that do must yield their irrational objections in the name of scientific advancement! But I do find human cloning repugnant, so scientific advancement must yield to my irrational feelings.”
I don’t understand this objection either. Of course Obama can’t commit the country “forever.” No President can. I don’t object to his claim of “forever;” I object to his current decision’s rationale. No one is talking about “forever” here. I want to know why we should shy away from human cloning when doing so is a false choice between sound science and moral values.
As others have said, yes, animal cloning does produce a wide variety of abnormal offspring, in addition to a very high embryonic or fetal death rate. This is likely something that could be fixed sooner or later.
The problem is that for humans, the only way to ever really be sure is to go ahead and do it, then observe the cloned person throughout their life. You’d have to do this enough times to establish rates of abnormalities vs. the general population and then you’d be condemning people to live out their lives with whatever issues were induced by the cloning process.
IOW, human experimentation, which pushes most people’s buttons.
There’s little evidence of the benefits of cloning right now, so the comparison is not as strong. The answer to your question is obviously the political one: a lot of people object to cloning, so Obama is stating it’s not going to happen on his watch. I don’t particularly agree with him, however. I don’t think cloning is immoral on its own, and while I don’t think it’s necessary either, I do think it’s possible we could gain valuable knowledge by studying it. To me, it’s hard to justify closing off that avenue of research.
I don’t say that “scientific advancement must yield to my irrational feelings”. I see very sound reasons to keep such irrational feelings from interfering with embryonic research, as it has enormous potential benefits. I see no such potential in human cloning, and therefore have no motivation to overturn or ignore my feelings on the matter.
There is no false choice. Not cloning humans IS sound science, based on all the evidence we have. You could even argue that not cloning animals is sound science, but that opens a whole 'nother can of worms in regards to PETA and animal experimentation and what not.
Now, granted, his speech is a little grandiose (“no place in our society, or any”), and a day will possibly come where cloning a human is no higher risk than IVF, and at that point society will have to really look at the issue in dpeth (actually, hopefully before that day comes). But for now, there is an obvious line of distinction between HESC research and human cloning.
That’s my understanding also. I think the gist of his position is to keep politics from interfering with what should be scientific decisions. If he said just that, wouldn’t some ESC research opponents try to scare the public with the cloning bogeyman? Saying there will be no human cloning heads off that line of discussion while not contradicting his position.
I seem to remember a law against human cloning being passed, but I may be mistaken.
Because some large fraction of the country would go apeshit if the government sponsored that sort of thing now.
As I said before, Obama’s stand against cloning people prevents the outcry.
On the other hand cloning mammals is still tricky, and you end up with lots of failures and even successes that don’t live as long as their supposed to. There needs to be a significant up side to human cloning before anyone will actually do it and AFAIK, we’re nowhere near having such an up side yet.
Obama himself is presenting a false choice between science and morality. Induced stem cells are a viable alternative to embryonic stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem cell - Wikipedia .
Obama opening up the embryonic stem cell lines is akin to Bush opening up more land for drilling oil. It’s the easy way out of a short term problem.
This has yet to be really determined, and it’s also an unnecessary waste of effort when embryonic cells are more easily available.
Well, there are a couple of differences. For one thing raping ANWR or the oceans for a little extra oil is not a “way out” of anything, it’s 10 years of work for a 6 month supply of oil that will mostly be sold to China…and calling reliance on oil a “short term problem” is ridiculous.
For another thing, stem cell research does no damage to anything and has no moral implications of any kind.