Cloning - National Academy of Sciences and Human Cloning :: Argumentative Persuasive Topics

National Academy of Sciences Human re-create   The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) made headlines when it issued a broadside that would, if followed by Congress, sacrifice an open-ended license for biotech researchers to clone human life. True, the NAS recommended that Congress ban procreative cloning, that is, the use of a cloned embryo to produce a born baby. exclusively it also urged that human cloning for purposes of experimentation--often called therapeutic or research cloning--remain unimpeded by legal restrictions. Such a public policy would countenance virtually unlimited human cloning--so long as all the embryos created thereby were destroyed rather than implanted in a womans womb.   The recommendation from a well-known scientific organization did not appear at this picky time by coincidence. The Senate will soon consider S. 790, legislation authored by Sam Brownback (R-KS) that would prohibit any creation of human clones--whether for research purposes or for reproduction. The House passed a virtually identical ban in a bipartisan vote last summer, and President Bush strongly supports the bill. thusly the legal future of human cloning--and the potential fortunes to be made by Big Biotech in the United States--hang in the balance in the Brownback bill.   close the ban on human cloning to procedures designed to lead to the give of a baby would accomplish next to nothing. Figuring out how to clone human life successfully is going to be very difficult. Thus, earlyish research would likely focus on perfecting techniques. Should this be successful, researchers would next undertake to maintain the resulting embryonic clone for a week to two weeks--long exuberant to harvest their stem cells. (The biotech company Advanced Cell Technology inform it has created human clones and maintained them to the six-cell stage(Advanced), which is not long enough for stem cells to appear.) Should the stem-cell point of no return be crossed, impl antation of the embryonic clone would then be relatively easy. Hence, the next natural (dare I use the word?) step would be the manufacture of human clones not just for research or contagious manipulation but for implantation, gestation, and birth. In any case, the morally serious dubiety is whether human cloning is permissible--not when those cloned should be killed once created.   Much as an accredited oil painting nookie be seen only dimly below its patina, an agenda to eventually permit unrestricted cloning for all purposes can be discerned between the lines in the NAS report.