Britain Approves Human Cloning 46
albat0r writes: "The scientific community in Britain scored a huge victory on February 27th. A very influential and powerful committee in the House of Lords ruled that embryo cloning should be allowed to proceed-but only under strict conditions. The United States currently has ban on all forms of human cloning."
It begins (Score:1)
Re:It begins (Score:1)
Re:It begins (Score:1)
Re:It begins (Score:1)
Unless that's how he'll make his return...
Re:It begins (Score:2)
Re:It begins (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously now, scientists already travel a lot, you know? This isn't going to make them "start travelling".
Since natural selection has ceased to work in human society, I think the only way our species is going to improve is through genetic engineering, so I agree with all research in that area. I think the USA will come to its senses sooner or later and lift the ban (in fact, there is probably some reasearch going on in military labs and kept secret from the public - as usual).
Re:It begins (Score:1)
Natural selection is not just lions eating up the slower cavemen, you know.
No, it just continues (Score:3, Insightful)
Make-up, plastic surgery, lobbying, family fortunes, social trends, etc., all interfere with evolution through natural selection to the point of making it irrelevant. Intelligent people actually tend to have less children than average, and less partners than average.
The only things still evolving are ideas; genetically speaking, mankind has been standing still for a few thousand years (we live longer because of less disease and better drugs - not because we are genetically "superior" to, say, the ancient egyptians).
Most genetic diseases only manifest themselves late in life (after we've had children), so they keep passing from generation to generation. The only way to eliminate them is to use genetic engineering / therapy (or kill everyone born with those diseases - but I don't think that would be very popular).
Saying genetic engineering is "wrong" and that we should rely only on natural evolution is like saying antibiotics are wrong and we should wait for the body's natural defences to kill the infections.
Ultimately, genetic engineering is a product of our own evolution, so it's as "natural" as learning to throw rocks at enemies or using language.
RMN
~~~
Re:No, it just continues (Score:3, Interesting)
You may be right that there are checks on its operation, but it *is* still operating. For instance, you say that smarter people reproduce at a lower rate than others. That leads to the conclusion that natural selection currently favors those who have lots of children without thought to the economic or social consequences.
I know several women who would like to have children, but are incredibly picky about their mates: either he's not interesting enough (read: he's a nice boy) or he's an asshole (read: he's not a nice boy). These women are old enough now that their chances of finding mates and reproducing are pretty low; they are being selected against for their inability to (a) have respect for men that show them respect, (b) put up with men that don't show them respect, or (c) take the risk of having children without the aid of a co-parent.
Considering the severity of the AIDS epidemic in Africa, not to mention other diseases (TB, West Nile, drug-resistant Flu strains, etc., etc.), it would seem to me that humankind is still locked in an evolutionary race with various pathogens. If half of sub-Saharan Africa dies of AIDS, those who were exposed to but never contracted HIV will have been selected for.
Another example is the steady decline in sperm count. Some couples that have trouble conceiving have the money for expensive fertility treatments, but they are the minority even in the developed world, moreso when you include the rest of humanity. So, those men with low sperm counts are being selected against.
You don't offer any evidence that we are genetically identical to the Ancient Egyptians, and even if we were, a few thousand years is as nothing to the process of natural selection. Using this argument would be tantamount to saying that the continents haven't drifted considerably since then so therefore tectonic theory is a crock.
Stephen Jay Gould and others have amply demonstrated that evolution operates in fits and starts; the idea that evolution proceeds at a steady pace is at odds with the best science we've produced on the subject. It may be that we are not currently evolving at a rapid rate, but to infer from that that natural selection has ceased operating is hubris in the highest degree.
Face it, natural selection is here to stay. Until we have eliminated murder, accidental death, and all diseases from the world, and legislated that couples will be paired randomly, that all couples will have exactly two children (this will necessitate advances in fertility medicine to allow sterile individuals to have children), that is. You let me know when all of this has taken place, and I will concede the point.
Hmm.. (Score:3, Informative)
The link seems to be dysfunctional. In any case, if my memory serves, UK is approving cloning of stem cells, not human beings. Sensationalism? Slashdot? Surely not!
That means, you can't have x copies of your favourite kid. On the other hand, you're allowed to use aborted foetuses to start new stem cell lines for research.. And probably transplants & stuff in future. I suppose if you feel abortion is wrong, no matter what, this won't make things any more reprehensible. As for me, I like the idea of "no waste". I just wonder why they don't recycle organs from executed prisoners..
Re:Hmm.. (Score:1)
That's a good point. Ethical issues aside, I wonder how much of an effect their drug and alcohol lifestyles would affect the transplant. I don't know much about medicine, so I myself wouldn't know.
Re:Hmm.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmm.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Criminal's organs (Score:3, Informative)
I just wonder why they don't recycle organs from executed prisoners..
A couple sci-fi writers have addressed this issue. I can only think of Larry Niven offhand, and his novel "A Gift From Earth" or the Gil Hamilton stories. Hypothetically, if a society starts to use criminals for organs, blood, experiments, etc, AND people start living much longer lives because of transplants, corruption is inevitable. People with desirable cell types get framed, or if they're lucky, can just donate an organ for their "punishment". If they're unlucky, they just vanish, minus a few valuable body parts.
Re:Criminal's organs (Score:1)
From what I recall of Niven's books, the argument was more like that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime, not surprisingly. To keep up a steady supply of replacements, voters will keep voting even more minor crimes to the death penalty class. Consider income tax fraud or shoplifting, for example. Yeah, you had organleggers in the books, but those boys'n'girls were first on the line to the chop shop if they got caught.
In any case, you can actually enforce a diet on death row inmates to ensure you have healthy donors at the end of the line. I don't know, I suppose most people would find it a little too cynical to use the appeals process time to clean out tar out of the convicts lungs..
Hmm yourself.. (Score:2, Interesting)
In my opinion creation of embryos is equivalent to cloning of human beings. Cloning stem cells themselves is virtually impossible for now, since human cells are virtually impossible to culture, with HeLa-cells [ultranet.com] (and some other cancer cells) as an exception..
"Embryo" (Score:3, Interesting)
Effect of fundimentalist religeon on politics (Score:2)
I'm sorry to see the politicians again using force to impose one view of "morality" on everyone. Too bad. Maybe if they impose enough one size fits all regulations, it will finally wake everyone up to the evil of a strong central government.
Bob-
Careful... (Score:1)
Careful how far you take this argument - most laws are based upon some form of "morality" or another. This does not mean that all laws are intrinsically bad - it just reveals one of the limitations of political systems/justice systems in general. De-centralizing government will not cure all of our problems.
Careful? Of What? Of Offending My Masters? (Score:3, Insightful)
Like this: Social animals like Humans constantly compromise on physical matters in order to get along with others. We stop at stop signs, make room on the side walk, lift our feet out of the way of running children.
When someone violates the social standard, deliberately or ignorantly annoying people around them, they are shunned by that society.
If someone goes further and deliberately or neglegently causes harm, they are prosecuted for that harm according to the standards of the society. This is codified in the "common law" countries as "trial by jury."
The "common law" requires that in order for someone to be punished, there must be a demonstration of harm caused, of damage done.
However, "regulation" and laws of morality require no such thing. One is guilty for the "crime" for simple posession of an object or substance. One is guilty of a "crime" for investigation or disemination of certain kinds of information, the definition of which is based solely on the whim of the political masters.
History is riddled by attempts to get Eve to put the apple back by prosecuting consensual acts. Replace by the apropriate myth for your cultural background.
It would please me very much to be completely un-careful in this matter and completely remove all morality based criminal statutes. All of them.
Yes, anarchy. The same anarchy that shows when people are polite to each other and share the sidewalk.
Bob-
Re:Careful? Of What? Of Offending My Masters? (Score:1)
One is guilty for the "crime" for simple posession of an object or substance.
This is not a law of morality. It would more accurately be described as a law of prevention. If a person posesses a firearm without a license, they are comitting no explicitly harmful crime yet this situation must be corrected. Regulation of potentially harmful objects or substances is necessary to prevent likely harmful crimes, and laws are necessary to enforce such regulations (it must be considered a crime not to comply with the regulations, or no one would do so). The only variable is the word likely, and it is in no way based on morals. It is based on individual and group statistics (i.e. has said person committed violent crimes before, or is this sort of crime common, or what is this object/substance normally used for).
Some cases do not meet the statistical requirements, or even projected statistics and logical assumptions, to prove that regulation is necessary and so politicians fall back on morality and religion as an explanation (since morals and religion are usually popular enough for a majority to nod their heads). The laws are based on the fact that law-makers believe that posession of an object, substance or knowledge could be harmful to society and therefore should be regulated.
The actual regulatory requirements can be debated, and I definitely disagree with many of those instituted currently, but the fact that some form of regulation is necessary for almost anything potentially harmful cannot be disputed.
You will agree that cars have a high potential to cause injury or death in the hands of an unlicensed driver, yet by your arguments driving should not be regulated until they have actually caused harm by driving the vehicle improperly. It is often necessary to project (by statistics or common sense) the likelihood of causing harm in different ways, and to regulate based on this. You have to apply the same standards to 'gray' areas like abortion and cloning as well. Despite all the wonderful benefits of embryo cloning, you must consider the potential harm as well. Although I disagree with most large governments' "if one person complains, shut it down for everyone and they won't know what they missed" attitude (like the skate park down the street that was shut down because one kid got hurt), the knowledge still needs some regulation to prevent harm. I don't care whether they call it morals or common sense.
Doubtless someone is reading this and thinking "but abortion doesn't hurt anyone but the foetus, and a foetus isn't a person," or some similar albeit less clear-cut case of moral definition. Well, that's the breaks folks. Vote for people who have the same definition of a 'person' as you do. There's nothing that can be done about that. Or for a definition of 'harm' or what constitutes a harmful act, or whether someone 'meant' to do it makes a difference, or how much statistical proof is necessary to regulate. All of these are human rights standards, there's no other way to define them, so we go with the majority. Period.
Licensure is wrong. (Score:2)
In America, 40,000+ people die because of tested and licensed drivers every year. The argument for licensure of driving is specious, demonstrably false, and continues only because people are too stupid to imagine a world different from what they are already accustomed to.
BTW, if the owner of a road wishes to verify that each driver has liability insurance before they may use their road, I couldn't agree more. It's their road, they own it, they get to choose. If I don't like it, I can choose not to use their road. Taxes give me no such choice.
Laws of prohibition are morality force on everyone at gun point. Just because you happen to agree with the prohibition does not change that fact.
Bob-
On a less emotional note... (Score:2)
It would, however, solve those problems caused by government, and remove government from its role as an impediment to peaceful progress.
Bob-
Re:Effect of fundimentalist religeon on politics (Score:1)
Now come on, that's an obviously false statement. Often times technology can be dangerous. Sometimes its in blatent ways, like the development of weapons of mass destruction. Other times the technology is more subtily dangerous, dangerous to society as a whole by destabilizing it, desensitizing it, demoralizing it... etc. (that's demoralizing as in removing morale, not morals).
Cloning technology could cause a signifigant destabilization of our society. Clones may feel resentment against their "original", or may feel that they have to live up to their predicessor (especially in the case of famous people being cloned). Add to that the fact that it is almost trivial to get a sample of someone's DNA (handshake, hairbrush, possibly even a urine sample), and you have the makings for some rather bad possibilities indeed.
There are non-moral reasons to ban cloning, especially considering the people that could be upset at seeing serious defects in their clones, etc (it is not an easy thing, remember how many sheep died of horrible disfiguration before dolly).
And as for "legislating morality" in this respect, I applaud any politician that sticks up for what they think is right. That's the purpose of lawmakers, to do what they think is right/best, that's why they are elected. If you do not think that they will support your views, then DO NOT VOTE FOR THEM. Everyone gets a certain amount of say, and we all must live with that, and accept whatever the will of the rest of society is, for better or for worse. If you strongly disagree, organize political protests, promote someone who agrees with your views, and VOTE. If you don't do this, then you have no weight in complaining about it!
There are a lot of people out there that think that human life is something special, and that we ought not be screwing around with it. Politicians which take a stand on this issue probably feel that they will be supported in doing so, and I think that idea has merrit. If you don't like it, then too bad, there's plenty of countries in this world to live in, you can pick one, no one is forcing you to stay (I'm assuming you live in a democracy).
Maybe if they impose enough one size fits all regulations, it will finally wake everyone up to the evil of a strong central government.
Strong central government isn't such a bad thing... the more power given to the local government, the more local laws differ in important ways (thus making complying with said laws while travelling more difficult). It also allows for more abuse of local minorities.
Individual Personal Copyright (Score:2)
What? You say you're not a censor? But you just pointed out how there is information you don't want other people to have. Seems remarkably egotistical to believe that you are better able to decide what is or is not "worthy" information. To prohibit, you must already know the information. What kept the keepers of the Index from being corrupted by information too dangerous for anyone to know? Nothing at all. That is why powerful central government is so evil. Power corrupts.
And those awful twisted creature created in your imagination and in the movies? Again you fail to consider individual responsibility. If I create such a creature, by genetic manipulation or by hitting someone with a baseball bat, it remains my responsibility to deal with the reprocussions of that action. Simple liability, another field of "law" that has been thoroughly fleshed out for centuries.
But on the one single valid point you have: The abuse of someone elses DNA. That's so simple I'm surprised it hasn't already occurred to you: Defend your personal "copyright". Prosecute someone who copies your pattern without your consent.
Not only don't you need a new law, all the previous precidents for plagiaism, invasion of privacy, and the like apply.
Thank you for reminding me of this particular argument, it's been a while since I saw anyone post it.
Re:Effect of fundimentalist religeon on politics (Score:1)
Re:Effect of fundimentalist religeon on politics (Score:1)
you obviously have not read enough history or cared enough to understand all the issues involved in any sort of religious proscription of science,
Well, I can't see how that's obvious, considering you didn't give examples of anything I said that was obviously wrong/naive. I'm a physics major, and an engineer, so I'm obviously not some luddite/technophobe (quite the opposite, I'm a total geek when it comes to technology, but that doesn't mean I think that all technology is a good idea).
i abhor your self-righteousness and petty,rambling morality.
example?
what you think is right is borrowed from some piece of history and a precedent made by individuals concerned with control and power for their own betterment and continued dominance. you are naive if you believe otherwise.
Perhaps you could clarify that statement, it's very ambiguous and I'm not altogether sure what you mean. Do you mean that my moral views are simply a product of the will of others who are trying to control the population? (religeous leaders?)
Anyways, you have made the error of responding to my post as a whole rather than individual statements/arguments within it, and did not manage to invalidate a single thing I said. You didn't give one example of anything I said which was flawed, but simply insulted my understanding of the subject (which, of course, you have no objective means of judging, nor do you attempt to point out the problems you perceive in my understanding).
You claim me to be self righteous, but do not demonstrate it. Rambling, perhaps by the length of the post, but if you are going to make insulting and/or strongly worded claims, you ought to at least back the statement up somehow, otherwise you're simply adding more hot air to the great hot air ballon that is slashdot.
It's these generic "what you said sucks" posts that really detract from the discussion environment here. If you don't agree witih what I say, feel free to demonstrate/prove that it was wrong. Insulting tone and nebulous, general statements do not serve the discussion, and really make you sound like an... inconsiderate individual, so to speak.
Feel free to expand on your post. If I'm being self-rigteous (which I was careful not to be, nowhere in my post did I advocate my moral standards, or even define them, or claim that I had a superior morality) then feel free to show me. Otherwise I'm sure there's plenty of other articles for you to troll.
In case this gets /. -ed (Score:1, Informative)
February 28, 2002 8:10 CDT
The scientific community in Britain scored a huge victory on February 27th. A very influential and powerful committee in the House of Lords ruled that embryo cloning should be allowed to proceed-but only under strict conditions. The United States currently has ban on all forms of human cloning.
Richard Harries, the Bishop of Oxford, chaired the committee making the historic decision. He said that cells extracted from embryos within two weeks of fertilization could prove to be critical for researchers in finding a cure for such degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. They could not in clear conscience cut off any avenue of research that might aid science in curing these diseases, he said.
Britain is no stranger to the human cloning controversy. Last year, they became the first country to explicitly allow the creation of embryos as a source of stem cells. These amazing cells are known as "master cells", and can morph into other cell types and become almost anything the brain needs. They are considered integral to finding cures for a wide range of neuro-degenerative diseases and spinal cord injuries, as well as those with acquired brain injuries.
Although this earlier ruling was hotly contested in court, it was eventually upheld by Parliament in that it was not officially revoked. The controversy was so severe that in essence it was effectively "on hold" pending the decision of the committee this past Wednesday. Critics of the whole idea are still outraged and adamant that this it tantamount to reproductive cloning and a short trip down a very slippery moral and ethical slope. The British Medical Association said they were thrilled with the committee's decision and the resulting hope that their action would bring to the families of patients who could benefit from the new technology.
The committee's decision was far from a cart-blanche approval for cloning. One of their conditions for granting a research license to clone human embryos was that it should only be done on the condition that any resulting cell line generated from it must be deposited in a stem cell bank. Future license seekers would first have to allow heath officials to make sure that there were no existing and appropriate cells lines already present in the bank's supply before proceeding.
The Medical Research Council applauded the Lords' suggestion to establish a stem cell registry, saying that it would allow researchers to explore the enormous potential of stem-cell research in a controlled environment. Actor Christopher Reeve was among those thrilled with the recent decision. Paralyzed since a horse-riding accident in 1995, he stated in an interview with the BBC that he would gladly travel anywhere in the world in order to receive "safe and appropriate treatment" that could aid in his recovery and help him accomplish his goal of walking again.
All the reaction has not been so glowingly positive. Critics are horrified at what they see as the evil potential of such a ruling. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children insists that the entire committee was stacked with supporters of human cloning and that many members on the committee have a vested financial interest in embryo research going forward, making the entire ruling "a farce".
The independent watchdog Human Genetics Alert pleaded that a moratorium on embryo cloning should be put in place, "at least until there is a ban on reproductive cloning in place."
Source: Reuters
Cosmiverse Staff Writer
o/~ Do you want to see... (Score:2)
Britannia rule the world
Again? My friends?
Follow the wombs! o/~
(The o/~ are music notes. Apologies to Pink Floyd.)
Contrast to USA (Score:1)
If you disagree, say so, don't moderate me as flamebait.
Re:Contrast to USA (Score:1)
Re:Contrast to USA (Score:1)
As for not being a religious country, go do some research and correct your misunderstanding. Church attendance is highest of all the major industrialized countries, and the fundamentalist sects are the ones that are growing. The liberal denominations are, for the most part, losing membership.
Great (Score:1)
[/. disclaimer: Yes, this was a joke]
david cross (Score:1)
'Cause its not like im advocating that they skin babies alive, cause then i would say Noooo. No, you do not skin a baby alive!
I want 2 clones! (Score:1)
But cloning seems to be a big subject nowadays, we're even talking in 2 different classes (at school) about it