Nebraska Bill to Outlaw All Human Cloning
Legislation has been introduced in Nebraska to outlaw all human cloning. And guess what? Unlike the deceptive Amendment 2, the legislation defines human cloning in a scientifically accurate manner. Maybe the reporters and editorialists of the Kansas City Star will read the legislation and learn that cloning is not, as the Amendment 2 propagandists asserted, the act of implantation. Nah. They might have to report it.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 5:21 PM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
asexual reproduction means reproduction not initiated by the union of oocyte and sperm;
Is that an egg and sperm restriction? An oocyte is an egg, right? Why obfuscate that? Are they trying to piss me off? Does "man and woman" not come in handy here, or what?
But after defining asexual reproduction, it doesn't prohibit asexual reproduction, it prohibits "human cloning", which means using a somatic cell to replace the contents of an egg cell. It doesn't prohibit genetic engineering or same-sex conception (which requires genetic engineering).
This act allows genetic engineering and same-sex conception, which are wicked risky and unethical.
It is really freakin' simple to write a natural conception law: no one may attempt to conceive a person by any means other than joining a man's sperm with a woman's egg.
John. This is in the definitions. They are seeking to outlaw the creation of a human organism by any means OTHER than the uniting of egg and sperm. You should be happy.
But if that pdf LB700 is the whole law, it doesn't stop them from changing the DNA so that it is not "virtually identical" to another person and experimenting with that embryo. It also doesn't stop people from using genetically modified sperm or eggs.
I agree it is great that it prohibits the creation and not only prohibit implantation of cloned embryos, but don't you agree that it leaves too many loopholes? Why not "no one may create an embryo that is not the union of a man's unadulterated sperm and woman's unadulterated egg" - which I think was Margaret Somerville's proposed language.
Cloning is not the only thing we need to worry about, so it contributes to the public's ignorance of the issues facing us to take this bill seriously. Very few people even want to clone anyone anyhow. Their pets, maybe, but hardly anyone wants to create a identical copy of "an existing or previously existing human." The transhumanist's whole point is that existing people are flawed, and they want to improve the genes somehow. Well, that's half their point, their other point is that we shouldn't be constrained to reproduce with someone of the other sex. This bill doesn't stop either of the things that transhumanists and postgenderists want to do.
Hold on: I can't see how you can get anything like "same-sex conception" while using an egg and a sperm cell. I mean, an egg comes from one sex, and a sperm cell comes from the other, right? So isn't something like somatic nuclear transfer the only hope for the (still entirely hypothetical) notion of same-sex conception?
Just as a side note, I suspect only cloning a female, or possibly using one female's egg and another's somatic cell, would be possible anyway, because as far as I know no one has found a way to do non-sexual conception without an egg. Indeed, it appears that eggs--even stripped of their nuclear DNA--are a heck of a lot more important to the development of an embryo than many people realize.
The law doesn't limit conception to an egg and a sperm cell. It only prohibits SCNT. It defines asexual reproduction as not initiated by egg and sperm, but doesn't prohibit it.
And, even if it did, it doesn't say you can't take an egg and replace the contents with adulterated chromosomes from a man.
So am I wrong about this? Is this not a really useless bill for the reasons I presented above? If the goal is as you say Wesley ("They are seeking to outlaw the creation of a human organism by any means OTHER than the uniting of egg and sperm") then shouldn't they rewrite the language so that it actually does that?
What is wrong with something like "attempting to conceive a person by any means other than joining a living man's unadulterated sperm with a living woman's unadulterated egg is a crime?" Makes too much sense?
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