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Cloning
Ban?
Bush issues upside-down assertion
that cloning is immoral
With
the advent of technological advances which may, some day, offer
hundreds of millions of people cures and treatments for otherwise
incurable diseases, naysayers and fearmongers are parading their
"just say no" mentality, a most unfortunate display
of luddite denial of human ability to improve our condition,
free of traditions, religions, and beliefs in deities.
Excerpt
from an editiorial by the editors of Scientific American, responding
to efforts of politicians, the religious right, and the vatican
to ban therapeutic human cloning:
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...
If the comprehensive ban does pass, its opponents can take faint
consolation in this: it won't last. Suppose that scientists
elsewhere
eventually use cloning to develop a treatment for Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, diabetes or paralysis.
Does
anyone believe that the American public would let its own suffer
and die while the rest of the world gets well?
That
it would do this out of concern for laboratory-bred cellular
specks?
This
is the tragedy of a comprehensive ban: that many of those now
against cloning will someday embrace it, when their misgivings--like
the patients who could have benefited earlier--are conveniently
buried.
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My
comments:
Having
had type 1 diabetes for over 41 years, since age 5, I have not
the luxury of time ... per studies, my lifespan is expected
to be about 15 years less than the average Joe. My risk of heart
attack or stroke is several times higher than the man on the
street.
And
there's more, but enough about me. The long list of persons
harmed by those who
endeavor to "hamper/slow/kill" stem cell research
and therapeutic cloning runs into the hundreds of millions.
In
the world, right now, a figure I'm quite attuned to, 18 million
type 1 diabetics (0.03% of the world's population) ...
And
the clock is ticking, and life is slipping away, and there are
those of us who dare to say, "this is it, folks, it's now
or never, sink or swim, all or nothing - stop killing us, stop
slowing / demonizing research into cures. Start
holding sentient human life in esteem, rather than religion
/ church / un-holy documents stock full of authoritarianism
and ancient mindsets of deceit, intolerance, and ignorance of
our naturalistic state of being in a world ruled by nature and
human efforts, not gods and demons."
As
for the effort of President Bush to kill therapeutic human cloning,
it's to his shame
and the shame of his interpretation of faith at all cost, the
cost in this case being that cells are considered of more value
than human lives.
He
claims he's pro-life, but in the case of hundreds of millions
of suffering human beings, he's pro-suffering and pro-death.
When
it comes to therapeutic human cloning, Bush is supporting opposition
to science in a manner similar to the way the catholic
church once opposed Giordano
Bruno and Galileo
Galilei.
Source:
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Scientists
Use 'Virgin Birth' Technique
Excerpts
from article describing a novel method used to create the first
human cloned embryo:
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In
many ways the most interesting announcement from Advanced Cell
Technology was not that its scientists had produced a human
embryo clone - significant though this was - but that the researchers
had also got a human egg cell to start dividing on its own just
like an embryo.
It
sounds something like the virgin birth. Technically, it is called
parthenogenesis.
The
human egg cell develops into an embryo without the addition
of any genetic material from a sperm cell. The embryo would
be a clone of the mother.
It,
too, could be a source of useful stem cells to grow into replacement
tissues and organs to treat degenerative diseases.
And
for some scientists, it overcomes the ethical dilemmas of "conventional"
cloning - for others, it will be just another example of science
going too far. ...
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Source:
US
Troops Secure Airbase Near Kandahar
Excerpts
from article describing the securing of an airbase in southern
Afghanistan by hundreds of US marines:
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(click for large size image)
Hundreds
of US Marines were setting up defences around an airfield close
to the city of Kandahar yesterday after seizing it as a forward
operations base for the final battle against the Taliban.
Amid
continued reports that Osama bin Laden had chosen to make his
stand alongside the Taliban leader Mullah Omar, American special
forces are expected to use the base as a springboard for attacks
on Kandahar.
A
total of 1,200 US marines will be on the ground by the middle
of the week, most of them brought in by Chinook helicopters.
"You'll
have one thousand-plus Marines in the back yard of the Taliban
within two days," said Marine Brig Gen James Mattis, the
commander of the operation, codenamed Swift Freedom. ...
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Source:
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