Keine Cloning

Germany's Ethics Council rejects cloning today. No doubt reacting in part to the last week's news about laws allowing embryo cloning research in Switzerland and Britain, the ethics group affirmed its previous position but did ask Germany's legislative body to discuss the matter again soon.

UN deadlock defeats cloning ban

After a number of delays and much maneuvering and politicking, a deadlocked United Nations has finally defeated a ban on therapeutic (research) cloning. The defeat is a blow to the Bush Administration, which has tried for years to get the international body to throw its weight behind a ban on the technology. While almost all nations support a ban on human reproductive cloning -- cloning procedures that result in a living child -- many nations support the use of cloning technology for medical research. In fact, much of the research goes on in the United States, and a three billion dollar bond issue in California promises to keep the US in the forefront of such research, unless our more conservative Congress passes a US ban.

Austalian Cloning Restrictions

They are more restrictive than you think. Julian Savulescu on ABC.

Wired News: Clone Ban Unlikely to Pass Senate

The change in administration makes stem cell proponents very nervous. Will a more republican Senate mean that the therapeutic cloning ban will finally pass, effectvely killing any chance for a stem cell biotech industry i nthe United States? Not according to Wired magazine, who report that, even with the change in administraion, a cloning ban is unlikely to pass even our new, more republican Senate. If Wired is right, the hopes for stem cell research in the US remain alive, and have been given a big boost by the passing of the $3 billion California stem cell initiative.

Vatican Backs Total Cloning Ban Including for Stem Cells

No surprise here, although it still remains to be explained how Catholics arrive at the notion that a nuclear transfer derived colony of cells with no potential for birth can be called an embryo. More in Catholic News.

UN Cloning Situation UPDATED

Leave it to the Christian Science Monitor to produce the first thoughtful description of the current state of the UN debate concerning the several versions of proposed international bans on several kinds of cloning technologies. UPDATE: The vote has stalled again as New Scientist reports in this great piece.

Constitutional Cloning Take 2- Wesley Smith & Brian Alexander

A couple of days ago we found Brian Alexander's Times magazine piece on the First Amendment and rights to research, specifically rights to clone. Brian commented that we were a bit too harsh. Now Wesley Smith comes to the debate with a quickly penned response to Alexander in the Weekly Standard. If you are scratching your head about the comments by Leon Kass in the Alexander essay, to the effect that Kass would "rather not think about" the constitutionality question, don't despair. Smith is only too happy to clarify the evils of a 1st Amendment argument. This is truly new territory for the neocon bioethics crowd - kind of like their adventure in human nature theory - and it makes for great reading.

UPDATE: NYT on Cloning and First Amendment

Brian Alexander, one of the best of the "bioethics essayists" to emerge in the past five years, helps the Times' Magazine make a first foray by a newspaper into one of the more interesting questions concerning current and pending laws governing both cloning and embryo research: could they survive an appellate court review? Is it unconstitutional (or wrong) to restrict scientific experimentation on the grounds that such a restriction violates freedom of expression? Brian quotes Robertson, Kass and Sunstein on the analogy between experimentation and reporting. Brian tells us the Times' editors cut his interview with Lori Andrews on her great work on the specific issue of the constitutionality of cloning per se. I wondered about why the piece didn't mention the important FDA policy prohibiting cloning that aims at gestation; Brian says the editors cut that too.