Ian Wilmut Predicts Ethical Stem Cells Achieved Before Cloning
Ian Wilmut, who supervised the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, is sad that human cloning hasn't worked so far. But something else he said was unexpected and is interesting news: He believes that cell reprogramming--that is, reverting a cell from a differentiated state (e.g, blood, skin, bone, etc.) to an embryonic stem cell state will occur before it cloning can be accomplished in humans. Leaving aside for the moment whether embryonic stem cells actually offer the "best hope," about which the jury is still out, if Wilmut is prophetic and a way is found to obtain pluripotent stem cells ethically and without treating human life like a crop--President Bush should receive the credit. His funding restrictions kept the moral value of nascent human life on the table. It caused scientists to search diligently for "alternative" methods," such as reprogramming and ANT. Had Bush gone along with the tide, I believe the federal government would be funding SCNT cloning by now and the importance of nascent human life would have long been swept away.
Labels: Ian Wilmut. Human Cloning.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:29 AM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
great news! It's looking more and more like "therapuetic cloning" is going to go away on its own. With all the danger to egg donors and ethical issues surrounding creating embryos, the alternatives will simply win out. I agree Bush's small steps were small enough to let this become clear, and he should get credit for that (and allowing research to continue on the existing lines turns out to have been smart, since they can't say that they'd have had more success if they'd been allowed to continue.)
But my old point resurfaces again: if it is looking like ESCR is going to whither and die on its own lack of merit, can we stop holding an egg and sperm law hostage to the demand that it also ban ESCR? There are still lots of people convinced that stopping ESCR is anti-science and religious and it's still a big plank in lots of candidate's platforms, it sways lots of votes. So a ban on ESCR is not close at all, but genetic engineering is very near, possibly next year according to Richard Scott, the leading same-sex conception researcher in New Jersey. Now the only reason remaining to do embryonic research is for reproductive genetic engineering and same-sex conception. Even the Brownback bill won't stop that, let alone the Hatch bill. Only the egg and sperm law will stop that, and it should be freed from the still-heavy baggage that it holds up science or cures.
They are not going to fade away. Big Bio's propaganda campaign will only get stronger and scientists want to clone for cloning's sake anyway.
My point is that fighting them together burdens both fights with extra baggage and neither of them is getting anywhere. The fight against manufacturing people shouldn't have to also fight against embryonic stem cell research, and the fight against escr doesn't need to rely on the specter of human cloning. Remember what you were saying about how sometimes its better to pare down the message and not put too many elements into an argument, even if they are all valid? This is a good example of trying to kill too many birds with one stone.
It seems like it is making it impossible for you to support an egg and sperm law because it might somehow give the impression that you are fine with experiments on embryos. It wouldn't! You could oppose both! You could just seperate the laws so that they could both fly instead of tying them together and dragging them down.
And what about that Richard Scott prediction? He predicited "three to five years" in 2005! There's not enough time to also stop embryonic stem cell research, it's too political already.
You can read the article about it here, it has been removed from the orginal website.
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