Mendacious Feinstein/Hatch S. 812
I can disagree with people about political, social, and moral issues and still respect them. But when they resort to the kind of deceptions that permeate S. 812, the Feinstein/Hatch bill to legalize human cloning and pay women to procure eggs for use in research--which pretends to ban human cloning and egg selling--it really makes me see red. So, I have detailed the Feinstein/Hatch deceptions in this piece in the Daily Standard.
I write: How can a bill to legalize human cloning be instead called a ban? Through the time-tested method of disingenuous legislating--the bogus definition. Here's a rarely discussed truth: Key words and terms in legislation mean only what a bill's authors say they mean, rather than their actual definitions. If a dung beetle was defined in legislation as a butterfly, for the purposes of that bill, the dung beetle would be a butterfly. Which is essentially what S. 812 does. It defines the term "human cloning" inaccurately and unscientifically so that Feinstein and Hatch can pretend their bill will outlaw human cloning.
Read the rest to see the whole sad saga. Is it any wonder the American people are so distrustful of politicians and their government?
Labels: Deceptive Legislation, S. 812
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:19 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
And California's Proposition 71. The problem is, the media just spouts the party line, the cloning side pour on the TV ads, and, alas, the big lie works.
Though there is a somewhat hopeful message to be learned from Missouri's Amendment II. At the start it had very high support because of the deceptive title and language. On election day though it came fairly close to not passing. This is significant being that the pro-ESCR money heavily outweighed the pro-life money spent on ads.
Though since this in Congress and not a direct amendment and lack of truth has never been a barrier in politics there is a much bigger fight.
Nice article Wesley, but you could make a much stronger argument by incorporating some things you might have learned from us blog readers.
The egg donor issue probably resonates with lots of people, but hey - it's their voluntary choice. And most people aren't convinced that cloned embryos are people (it must be a much larger group than people who support abortion rights). So if that is all the argument against this bill comes down to, lots of people aren't going to be convinced.
Why not point out that it doesn't ban genetic engineering? That it would allow a scientist to create near-clone, where nothing is "transferred" from a somatic cell, becuase what is inserted is a genetically modified nucleus, just like a clone but with one or two genes modified?
Why not point out that SCNT is only one of hundreds of unethical ways that people might try to create a human baby? Why not push for an egg and sperm law like Leon Kass said we should? That would stop all forms of cloning or genetic engineering and ensure that everyone is conceived by the natural joining of two people who choose each other to conceive with. It takes conception forever out of the commercial lab and keeps it in the bedroom, or the grassy field, as the case may be.
Thanks for reading the article, John, and for the semi-compliment. When writing an article, for it to be read it must not "get out of hand." Try to put too much into it and it becomes unmanageable and unreadable. My goal--which I think I accomplished--was not to hit every issue that I might care about, but to descredit the bill as the deceptive drek that it is. The point is for others, e.g., journalists who might be researching the issue, bloggers, interested readers, etc., talk radio hosts (Did Lars Larsen today on the piece) to see that the bill doesn't ban cloning at all.
But a majority of people have already made a practical distinction between people and fetuses, and even more between unimplanted embryos and people. Even though those people would oppose genetic engineering of humans, they are left under the impression that this bill bans that sort of thing, since apparently the only argument against it is that same old "embryos are people" argument that just makes them even more resolute in taking the opposite side.
I do think you do that argument very well, and it certainly needs to be made, so that's a full compliment. But I also feel I need to make a full criticism too. Sometimes "dumbing it down" is just dumb if people think "is that all ya got?".
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