(See, for example: http://www.nature.com/news/human-stem-cells-created-by-cloning-1.12983 - titled "Human Stem Cells Created by Cloning")
Wesley Smith in National Review analyzes the reasons for the inaccuracies in the reports:
First, we just went through a very busy news week. But I think the primary reason is that the scientists and media pretended that this wasn't really human cloning for political reasons; just a step in that general direction.I would add the more charitable possibility that journalist simply don't understand the science, and the scientists aren't eager to explain it -- possibly because cloing humans is illegal in many places.
But the process was exactly the same as the one that produced "Dolly" the sheep. Smith continues:
Just like Dolly the cloned sheep was a cloned sheep embryo before she was a born lamb, these human embryos were nascent human beings created through asexual means. They were not implanted into a uterus, as Dolly’s embryo was, but destroyed for their stem cells. Indeed, they were created precisely to be destroyed. That is a very big moral deal.The scientists and the media owe us an accurate explanation. If we don't know what's happening, we can't properly consider the moral implications.
... a huge deal, opening up the possibility of genetic engineering of embryos, creating custom made fetuses as organ farms, and the birth of a cloned baby...
Wow! It seems like everything I read these days reminds me of "A Brave New World" (Required reading in my junior year of HS. Which ironically, I was repulsed by in the first chapter and actually approached the teacher concerned about what we were reading.) What repulsed me was very close to what you described. The part where all the new life was farmed in a laboratory and young girls were put on birth control at puberty.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested in knowing if there are any ways to take action on these issues...thx
ReplyDeleteChristi,
ReplyDeleteThe best way to take action is to learn all you can about the issue, then work with others who believe as you do, and spread the word. That's why I write these posts, and why I always link to full stories. I want people to read more about what's happening.
Eventually enough people find out about it, and demand action. The recent stories about the NSA and Verizon cell phones are a perfect example. It's been going on for years, finally the British media picked up on it, and now people know about it, and are demanding action.