A four year "BAN" on SCNT? Tell your Senators NO!

*We must not allow this! See the action alert and other up-to-minute PD
related news on
www.youngparkinsons.com and react today! -Tom



Reporting on the Report


Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez



obert P. George, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, is
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James
Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton
University. His most recent book is The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law,
Religion, and Morality in Crisis.


Kathryn Jean Lopez: What's the most important contribution the
bioethics council's report on cloning makes to the whole cloning
debate?

Robert P. George: First, the report calls for a prohibition of so-
called "research cloning" for four years. If adopted by Congress,
this moratorium would prevent the creation of cloned embryos to be
destroyed in biomedical experimentation for a substantial period of
time while we work to make the ban permanent. During that time,
advances made possible by ethically sound biomedical research could
quite possibly eliminate much of the appeal of creating human embryos
(whether by cloning or other means) for purposes of destructive
experimentation.

Second, the report dismisses the euphemisms and evasions on which the
case for "research cloning" is built. For example, proponents of the
creation of human embryos by somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) for
purposes of research sometimes claim that SCNT is not cloning.
Rather, they define "cloning" as the implantation of an embryo
brought into being by SCNT into the prepared uterus of a woman (or
into an artificial womb). This is a gross deception. (It is a
deception that is, by the way, actually written into legislation
introduced by Senators Kennedy, Feinstein, Specter, and others that
fraudulently claims to ban cloning.) SCNT is a method of cloning; and
the report treats it as such. Even more egregiously, some advocates
of destructive embryo research have claimed that a human embryo
produced by cloning is not human or not an embryo. They say that it
is an "artifact." The report demolishes this falsehood. The human
embryo — whether produced by the union of sperm and egg or by SCNT or
other cloning processes — is an embryonic human being.

Lopez: Are you at all disappointed with the final report released
last week?

George: Like six of my colleagues, I would have preferred a report
that recommended a permanent ban on all cloning. The four-year
moratorium is certainly superior to no prohibition on research
cloning, but even better would have been a call for a permanent ban
on the creation of embryos — by cloning or otherwise — to be
exploited and destroyed in scientific research. In my statement
appended to the report (which was joined by Professor Alfonso Gomez-
Lobo of Georgetown), I make the case for a permanent ban and
criticize the leading arguments that were advanced against it by
members of the council who wish to proceed with cloning for
biomedical research. There are also powerful anti-cloning statements
by Gilbert Meilaender, William Hurlbut, and Charles Krauthammer. All
of us understand and share the desire to relieve suffering, conquer
disease, and increase the sum of human knowledge; but I don't think
the pro-cloning forces have a leg to stand on — scientifically or
philosophically — in denying that human embryos are human beings and,
as such, worthy of a measure of respect that is simply incompatible
with treating them as disposable "research material." If Congress
enacts the proposed four-year moratorium, we will during that time
have a national debate about the moral status of human beings in the
embryonic stage of development. That is a debate I welcome.

Lopez: How hard was it to get a majority of commission members to
agree to the moratorium on "research cloning"?

George: Seven of us favored a permanent ban; seven others wanted no
ban at all; three favored a four-year moratorium. The seven who
wanted a permanent ban were willing to settle for recommending the
moratorium in preference to no prohibition. Of course, different
members of the council supported the moratorium recommendation for
different reasons. One could say that our recommendation rests on
an "overlapping consensus" among some people who oppose the cloning
of embryos for destructive research under any circumstances, and
others who believe that such cloning could be justified, but who hold
that the case for it in the current circumstances has not been made.

Lopez: Is there anything then report does not address that you would
have wanted it to?

George: The report was meant to be a report on cloning — not on every
morally problematic issue of biotechnology. Considered as a report on
cloning, it is reasonably comprehensive. The trouble is that the
issue of "research cloning" cannot be addressed apart from the
question of the moral status of the embryo. If human embryos are
human beings in the embryonic stage of their natural development —
and that is exactly they are — then what could justify treating
embryonic human beings as objects to be exploited and destroyed for
the benefit of others? We do not countenance the exploitation of
human beings on the basis of race, or sex, or ethnicity. Why should
we deny human rights on the basis of age, size, stage of development,
or condition of dependency? The report does not go deeply into these
issues, but they really do need to be addressed. There is, in the
end, no avoiding them.

Lopez: Can the council report ultimately be considered a victory for
the anti-cloning forces? Doesn't it just mean we have to re-debate
the issue four years from now when the "promises" of cloning will
be "closer"?

Goerge: The report is a victory, though our council fell short of
endorsing President Bush's call for a permanent ban on all cloning at
this point. I agree with Richard Doerflinger of the Pro-Life Office
of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who says that it is
remarkable that a body as diverse as ours could agree on a four-year
moratorium. Four years is a long time in the field of biotechnology.
Far from grinding to a halt, science will march on. As I said
earlier, it is possible that researchers will find — indeed they are
already finding — ethically legitimate ways to accomplish the goals
that pro-cloning people said could only be achieved by destructive
research on cloned embryos. One of the saddest things about this
whole debate is the way that the pro-cloning lobby led many suffering
people to believe that cloning, and cloning alone, holds promise of
cures for the horrible diseases that afflict them. They hyped the
promise of cloning while obscuring or denying the value of adult-stem-
cell research, for example. Before any embryos were cloned and
killed, truth was the first casualty.

Lopez: What if a moratorium doesn't happen in Congress, which is
conceivable? There's no turning back once this technology gets going,
is there?

George: Charles Krauthammer warns that if we cross the "moral
boundary" into cloning embryos for research, "we will live to regret
it." Embryonic human beings will be routinely created, openly bought
and sold, and freely destroyed. When promising lines of research
emerge requiring the use of more fully developed human beings,
embryos will be gestated to permit the extraction of body parts from
more mature embryos and fetuses. People who today swear that they
would never support research on embryos beyond the blastocyst stage
(five to six days) will find themselves saying — rightly — that such
limits are "arbitary." Then they will call for them to be laid aside
in view of the promise of research using more fully developed embryos
and then fetuses. The appalling concept of "fetal farming" will lose
its power to shock as the commodification of life leads us further
into the abyss of the "culture of death."

The only non-arbitrary principle is the one that says human beings —
irrespective of age, size, stage of development, or condition of
dependency — may never be exploited and destroyed in research to
benefit others. This principle recognizes the great truth that human
life is intrinsically, and not merely instrumentally, valuable. It
understands that human dignity is inherent, and thus it makes sense
of the great principle of human equality upon which our nation was
founded. It is our fidelity to this principle that is ultimately at
stake in the debate over cloning.


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Sincerely,
__________________________________________________________________
Tom Berdine
 
President; Young Onset Parkinson's Association (YOPA)
HYPERLINK "http://www.yopa.org/"http://www.yopa.org/
 
Founder; YoungParkinsons.com
HYPERLINK "http://www.youngparkinsons.com/"HYPERLINK
"http://www.youngparkinsons.com/"http://www.youngparkinsons.com/
__________________________________________________________________

 

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