Bill Would Ban Human Reproductive Cloning

By James Donahue

July 31, 2005

Five U.S. Senators have joined forces to introduce a bill that would make it a federal crime to attempt to clone a human being in the United States.

One of the sponsors of the bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said she believes such cloning would be “immoral and unethical. It must not be allowed under any circumstances.”

The bill, also getting sponsorship from Republicans Orrin Hatch and Arien Specter, and Democrats Edward Kennedy and Tom Harkin, would set penalties of up to ten years in prison and a million dollar fine for anyone caught cloning or attempting to clone a human.

The bill is relatively simplistic in its wording in that it is straightforward and deals with the cloning of humans. It is unclear how the courts will interpret such wording, however, if cloning human body parts for medical purposes is attempted.

Scientists already are successfully growing human body parts on animals for possible transplant to humans. But this is only the early stages of this new and exciting field of medical research. Might we someday consider growing a cloned but brainless body of ourselves as a supply depot for aging and worn-out parts? Would it be possible to have a kidney, heart, liver or lung transplanted from a living but brainless clone of ourselves for an extension of our lives?

Will an ultra conservative court even allow the use of our cells to clone body parts in our own bodies? For example, the concept of growing a cloned human heart in our own chest, next to a damaged heart, is a conceivable method of replacing hearts. But would those new growing cells in the body be given the same individual rights as a new fetus in those early months of a pregnancy?

Would such science be conceived by Christian judges and lawmakers as “the work of the Devil?”

When we have debates over the morality of medical research using the living stem cells of unborn and aborted babies, you can believe the courts will perceive something wrong with using human cells to grow new kidneys or livers, even if we plant them somewhere in our own bodies.

Such science may never be tried in this country as long as we have Christian driven legislation like this pushed into law. The belief that it is immoral to destroy a living human body, even a brainless and soulless clone of ourselves produced from a Petri dish, is a religious fallacy.

The insanity of the Christian belief system is entrenched to deeply in this country that I fear that all of this marvelous research is going to be reserved for laboratories in other countries of the world.

The good side to this story is that U.S. Legislators can only rule up to the borders of this country. They cannot stop human cloning in Europe and Asia and South Africa and South America.

Somewhere it will be done.