[schrocat]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7904332/

[Ninong]

Probably not in my backyard (Louisiana) either but I see where they have cloned a human embryo in the U.K. using nuclear transfer, which is the method they used to clone all the other mammals that have been cloned recently.

Britain has an excellent law in place that allows embryonic stem cell research provided the blastocyst is destroyed before the 14th. day. In practice, it is used during the first few days because that's the optimal time to harvest the cells. Cloning for reproductive purposes is not allowed. The penalty is up to ten years in jail and I believe an enormous fine. California and several other states allow therapeutic cloning but not reproductive cloning. Six states prohibit all cloning. There are no federal laws regulating cloning yet because the Republican dominated House wants to ban all cloning and the Senate doesn't. That's because the Senate's four or five moderate Republicans and the conservative Mormon Republicans favor stem cell research.

Last time I checked (which was a few years ago), we had six Mormons in the U.S. Senate (Harry Reid plus five Republicans). All of the Mormon Republicans are against abortion but most, if not all, of them favor embryonic stem cell research. They can get away with that because of the way the Book of Mormon defines the beginning of human life: The souls of individual children reside somewhere up there in the sky (heaven) with God and then they come down to earth and enter the the human embryo but only after it is implanted in the uterus and viable. This is actually very similar to the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, who held that the intellectual soul didn't enter the fetus until somewhere around the end of the first trimester. Aquinas wrote of three different forms of the soul that became one and complete only after the emergence of the intellectual soul.

California's new embryonic stem cell research center will be headquartered in San Francisco. That proposition passed easily, especially since it had the support of the Republican governator. The state of California will be spending $300 million a year for the next ten years ($3 billion) to sponsor stem cell research. I believe Massachusetts is getting ready to do something similar. Britain got the jump on everybody a few years back and several leading authorities in this field left the U.S. for the U.K.

P.S. -- Off-topic, but speaking about Ah-nult: His approval rating has dropped from the high 60's all the way down to 40%!!! Right now he's getting ready to do a five state tour to raise OUT-OF-STATE money to help fund his controversial ballot initiatives. That will almost certainly backfire! It was politically naive of him to take on the nurses' unions, the teachers' unions, the police unions and the fire fighters' unions all at the same time. His ego is so enormous that he expected the public to love him more than they do nurses, teachers, police and fire fighters!!!

His popularity started going downhill when he made his now famous remark about kicking the nurses' butts. He was giving a speech in a hotel ballroom when a group of nurses in the rear of the audience unfurled a protest banner and started chanting protest slogans against the Governator because he had suspended the implementation of a law that was supposed to go into effect January 1, 2005 that would have required hospitals to have one nurse for every five patients instead of the previous requirement of one nurse for every six patients. Ah-nult said the hospitals couldn't afford to comply, so he suspended the new rules.

His infamous remark: "Don't pay attention to them. They're special interests. I kick their butt." Somehow or other the general population didn't take too kindly to the prospect of the Terminator beating up on nurses.

[Penguin]

New Jersey also passed legislation and is funding an embryonic stem cell research institute.

I really feel that the Feds need to step up and fund this research. Under current restrictions, US scientists working in this field are effectively cut off from NIH funds, traditionally the lifeblood of their research.

[Ninong]

Biologists in South Korea reported Thursday the creation of the first stem cell lines engineered to carry the DNA of patients with chronic disease and injury, a development hailed by some as perhaps the most significant technical advance for regenerative medicine since stem cells were isolated from human embryos in 1998.

"Patient-specific" stem cells are expected to be invaluable as laboratory tools to study the genetic roots of diseases and to develop new treatments that might arrest the process long before symptoms appear. Eventually, scientists hope to use embryonic stem cells to find new ways to diagnose and treat such mysterious ailments as autism and schizophrenia.

The research was reported Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.

"It's spectacular," George Daley, a stem cell biologist at Harvard University, said of the research. "It's moved the field so far forward and so much more quickly than anticipated."



Not everyone was impressed, however; Dear Leader was not pleased:


“I’m very concerned about cloning,” the president said. “I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted.”

White House deputy press secretary Trent Duffy said the work in South Korea amounted to human cloning for the sole purpose of scientific research. “The president is opposed to that,” Duffy said. “That represents exactly what we’re opposed to.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7922271/

[Penguin]

I don't think there's much hope at all of the US instituting a policy any time soon like the UK or S. Korea. But allowing researchers to establish new cell lines using some of the surplus embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics would provide a big boost, and be a reasonable compromise IMO. Bush has already said he'd veto such a bill.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/...lls/index.html

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Penguin

I don't think there's much hope at all of the US instituting a policy any time soon like the UK or S. Korea. But allowing researchers to establish new cell lines using some of the surplus embryos at in vitro fertilization clinics would provide a big boost, and be a reasonable compromise IMO. Bush has already said he'd veto such a bill.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/...lls/index.html

It really doesn't matter what the U.S. does as long as they continue to do nothing to interfere with progressive states where therapeutic cloning research is already taking place. As far as I know, we have no national laws on cloning or stem cell research. Each state has it own laws. Therapeutic cloning, such as that described in the Korean story, is fully legal in California. Reproductive cloning is not.

The Bush administration has banned federal funding for this research but California will be spending much, much more than the federal government ever spent to promote the limited funding of existing stem cell lines, most of which are not viable anyway.

The Catholic Church and the religious right-wing of the Republican Party that currently has undue influence on the administration would like to see a federal law banning all use of embryonic stem cells. They want federal law to codify full protection under the law for "children" from the moment of conception, which, of course, requires the reversal of Roe v. Wade -- something Bush has promised them repeatedly in private. All of which fits in with the current topic at hand in the Senate, which is the confirmation of federal judges and the present three-fifths super-majority required under Senate Rule 22 to invoke cloture.

Best estimates right now are that the administration has somewhere between 49 and 51 votes to change the rules. They have 55 Republicans in the Senate but a few of them have already announced their opposition to the "nuclear option" -- so named by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott in November 2003 when he first discussed using it. Obviously that was before he expressed his wish that Strom Thurmond had been elected president on the Dixiecrat segregation platform. The leadership only needs 50 votes because Cheney would then cast the deciding vote. Every time I think of Cheney I remember that he was the only House member to vote AGAINST every resolution calling for freedom for Nelson Mandela.

[Penguin]

True, the research will continue to go forward in states like CA and NJ that have chosen to fund it. Funding from private organizations will play an important role too. But the research will likely progress more slowly because there will be probably be fewer scientists working on it, fewer new lines developed, etc.

I don't believe there is even a federal law prohibiting reproductive cloning yet, though the vast majority of scientists are in agreement that it shouldn't be attempted.