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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. HYPERLINK "http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/servlet/kherald.article.view?id=2002071600 49&tpl=print" 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/ __________________________________________________________________ --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.377 / Virus Database: 211 - Release Date: 7/15/2002 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn