 |
 |
How many years has the war on cancer been going on? President Nixon announced it, roughly 1970. 35 years and billions of dollars later, cancer is still an incurable disease. Now what if Dan Kaufman comes up with a cure for cancer-and that cure involves Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT, or therapeutic cloning) should we give him or her the Nobel Prize, as was done for Paul Berg for his pioneering DNA research-or should we throw that person in jail? Option one: Nobel prize for curing cancer with SCNT. Option two: jail sentence for curing cancer with SCNT. Those are the choices: the religious right wing and people like Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Representative Dave Weldon (R-FL) favor option two. If the Brownback/Weldon legislation passes-the Human Cloning Prohibition Act has passed the conservative-dominated House of Representatives twice, and is waiting in the wings of both Senate and House right now)-jail will be the reward for curing cancer. If Brownback and Weldon get their way, any scientist, doctor, patient, or parent involved with SCNT will go to jail for ten years, be fined one million dollars (or more) and have (if scientist or doctor) all their equipment confiscated. Which way will we go? For my vote, a scientist who can save my sister Barbara from her cancer deserves the highest honor Earth can provide. The vast majority of Americans would agree, I think. But then again, we just lost two outstanding cancer specialists, stem cell researchers Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins. They wanted to come to California, to work at Stanford, California. They had discovered a way to identify cancer-causing genes. If I understand correctly, it was hoped they might be able to use embryonic stem cells (almost certainly SCNT) to build microscopic models of cancers-and find ways to defeat them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn