 |
 |
The Washington Post ran an op/ed article today - "Personhood in a Petri Dish" by Richard Cohen. I think its the best article i have read so far in terms of explaining in plain English what therapeutic cloning is and what it is not. The full article is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30701-2002May29.html Here are some excertps: Personhood in a Petri Dish By Richard Cohen Washington Post, 5/30/02 "Come with me into Cohen's Lab. We are going to do some cloning. I have a client with Parkinson's disease, and so I take a cell from his tongue, extract the DNA from it, insert it into a human egg, zap the egg with electricity, add some chemicals (sorry, the exact formula is secret), wait about a day, extract the cells my patient needs and inject them into his brain so -- knock on wood -- he will have Parkinson's no more. It is at this point, if certain lawmakers have their way, that the cops will burst in, cuff me -- and throw me in jail for possibly 10 years." " How much of this is science fiction? Well, not the very first part about extracting the cell from the tongue and inserting the DNA into an egg. And not, would you believe, the last part, either. If a bill sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) passes, human cloning of any kind -- even just for medical purposes -- will become illegal. This bill has already passed the House." " You might have noticed while in my lab that at no time was my human egg fertilized. So if you believe that life begins at conception, you are not getting life with this process." "... my goal -- my sole intention -- is to alleviate human misery. I want to cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. I want to replace defective cells with brand-new ones, and because the donor and the recipient are one and the same, I don't have to worry about the body's rejecting the new cells. I don't want to make so-called designer babies, nor, for that matter, is there any chance at the moment I could. At the moment, the sad fact is that I cannot even make the cells I want. Someday, maybe, I can. Someday I -- which is to say "we" -- can have cures for diseases that now make life so miserable for so many." "... in medical research -- medical research above all -- it is inconceivable that the government would use its police powers not to impose standards but to enforce ignorance and, as a consequence, human suffering. I don't think a cloned cell is a person. But I am sure a Parkinson's sufferer is." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn