cloning

This Week in Bioethics

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1. This Needs to be Read and Shared as Widely as Possible California oncologist and hematologist Dr. Philip Dreisbach writes in the Wall Street Journal as clearly and urgently as I have seen about the perils of physician assisted suicide. He begins by highlighting some of the problems specific to California’s recently enacted assisted suicide […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Priorities at the VA The department of veterans affairs this week released the preliminary results of a new study on suicide among veterans. “In 2014, the latest year available, more than 7,400 veterans took their own lives, accounting for 18 percent of all suicides in America. Veterans make up less than 9 percent of […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. Gene Editing Summit Supports Human Embryo Research The just concluded International Summit on Human Gene Editing called for “cautious development” of germline editing. While the hope is that such a method would prevent the spread of certain inheritable diseases, it does so by destroying human embryos and it will almost certainly open the floodgates […]

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This Week in Bioethics

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1. India Bans Foreigners from Hiring Surrogate Mothers The Indian government delivered a huge win to women and children this week by announcing they would issue a ban on foreigners hiring Indian women as surrogate mothers. Unfortunately, the practice will still be available for Indian couples, but this move is a major step in the […]

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Christmas List in Three Words

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Have you seen the #XmasListIn3Words meme going around around on social media? Here are a few three-word Christmas wishes we have: Stop Think Again Comfort Not Kill Stop Surrogacy Now No Human Cloning Truly Human Future

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If We Do Nothing, They Will Clone

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Human cloning is here. After years of effort, scientists manufactured human life using the same process that created Dolly the sheep. There is no way around it: The age of human cloning is here—unless we act now to prevent it. Why outlaw human cloning? As the United Nations General Assembly decided in a nearly 3-1 […]

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The Human Cloning Goal Behind Stem Cell Cures

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Buried deep in an encouraging story about another advance in turning skin cells into stem cells, we see more evidence of biotechnology’s ultimate human cloning goal. First, the good news. An acid bath may be able to replace viruses in transforming skin cells into stem cells that can become any type of cell in the […]

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My Predictions in Bioethics Right Again!

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Can you believe a year has come and gone since I last told you what would happen, before it happened, in bioethics? Maybe it’s my increasing age, but time is passing too fast! So, how did I do? Not as well as in years past, but still an A-. Let’s take a look: The Affordable […]

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It’s Promise Breaking Time

In California, a bill that would allow researchers to pay women for their eggs is currently on the Governor’s desk, awaiting his signature or veto. At the CBC we have been very busy, working to make the very real risks of the egg retrieval process known so that both lawmakers and the public are fully […]

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Cloning Science’s War Against Poor Women

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Back when California’s Proposition 71 was being pitched — which created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) — opponents warned that making human cloning a state constitutional right would result in the exploitation of poor women for their eggs — needed in every attempt at SCNT cloning. Responding, supporters promised to prohibit egg buying […]

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The Big Cloning News You Probably Didn’t Hear

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Nearly two decades have passed since the birth of Dolly the sheep, a clone manufactured through a process known as somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Since that time, the prospect of human cloning has been eagerly—or fearfully anticipated—throughout the world. Indeed, in 2004, Korean scientist Huang wu-Suk became generated world headlines when he claimed to […]

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Federal Bill to Legalize (and Fund?) Human Cloning

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As Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Representatives Diana Digette (D-CO) and Charlie Dent (R-PA) have introduced a mendacious bill requiring the federal government to conduct and support for stem cell research. It also provides a guarantee of funding for embryonic stem cell research. But I think the real point is […]

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2002 Krauthammer Against Human Cloning

Over at my biweekly First Things column, I urge that laws be passed outlawing all human cloning. Cloning, by the way, is the act of creating an embryo through asexual means such as somatic cell nuclear transfer (which I explain in the article). It is not the birth of a cloned baby. That is one […]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 8: A Blastocyst, Not an Embryo

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Embryology text books will tell you that when fertilization is completed, an embryo is formed. That, is, a new individual organism exists — which remains the same organism until death. For scientific purposes, the developmental stages of the embryo are given different names. When it is one-celled, it is a zygote. When it is about […]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 6: German Style

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I just read an article that is a clear call for Germany to get in on the human cloning game. And as so often happens in this issue, it is filled with scientific inaccuracies — whether by intent or ignorance, I don’t know. First, the article in Deutche Welle, claims that the recent human cloning […]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 5: Monkey Cloned Pregnancy

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Thanks to Brendan P. Foht, over at The Corner, for showing that it was misleading to claim that SCNT human cloning could not lead to a human pregnancy because there have been no successful cloned monkey pregnancies. But there have been cloned monkey pregnancies, with one embryo developing to the fetal stage with a heartbeat! […]

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Human Cloning Obfuscation 4

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The Los Angeles Times has waded in to the junk biology game, assuring us that no embryos are threatened in human cloning — WHEN THE WHOLE POINT OF HUMAN CLONING IS TO CREATE AN EMBRYO! From the editorial, “The Specter of Human Cloning:” The team at OHSU, which disclosed its work in a paper published […]

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Let the Cloning Obfuscation Begin

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Now that human cloning is upon us, look for many scientists and their camp followers (or ignorant reporters) to mislead about what the technology entails. Human SCNT creates human embryos through asexual means. It does not create stem cells. To obtain cloned stem cells, the embryos have to be nurtured and maintained in a dish […]

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