Science and Ethics of Human Cloning: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Eighth Congress, First Session, January 29, 2003, Volume 4 |
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23 chromosomes adult stem cells allow American ban all human ban on human believe bill biomedical research blastocyst bryos cell nuclear transfer Chairman cloned babies cloned child cloned embryos cloned human embryos cloning for biomedical cloning to produce cloning-for-biomedical-research cloning-to-produce-children Committee Congress Council on Bioethics cure Dave Weldon debate diabetes differentiated diseases embryogenesis embryonic stem cells ethical Federal funding fetal genetic going GULDEN hope human cloning implanted important issue KASS legislation major medical research moral moratorium nascent human nuclear transplantation nucleus parents Parkinson's patient potential PREPARED STATEMENT President's Council procreation produce children promise question Raelians reproductive cloning research cloning scientific scientists SCNT Senator BROWNBACK Senator Hatch Senator Specter Senator WYDEN society somatic cell nuclear sperm stem cell lines stem cell research Subcommittee technique Thank therapeutic cloning therapies tion tissue Toomey U.S. SENATOR Usala vitro fertilization Weldon womb
Popular passages
Page 37 - The cloned person may experience concerns about his distinctive identity not only because he will be in genotype and appearance identical to another human being, but, in this case, because he may also be twin to the person who is his "father" or "mother" — if one can still call them that.
Page 38 - In clonal reproduction, by contrast, and in the more advanced forms of manufacture to which it leads, we give existence to a being not by what we are but by what we intend and design. As with any product of our making, no matter how excellent, the artificer stands above it, not as an equal but as a superior, transcending it by his will and creative prowess.
Page 38 - Human cloning would also represent a giant step toward turning begetting into making, procreation into manufacture (literally, something "handmade"), a process already begun with in vitro fertilization and genetic testing of embryos. With cloning, not only is the process in hand, but the total genetic blueprint of the cloned individual is selected and determined by the human artisans. To be sure, subsequent development will take place according to natural processes; and the resulting children will...
Page 38 - ... processes; and the resulting children will be recognizably human. But we would be taking a major step into making man himself simply another one of the man-made things. How does begetting differ from making? In natural procreation, human beings come together to give existence to another being that is formed exactly as we were, by what we are — living, hence perishable, hence aspiringly erotic, hence procreative human beings. But in clonal reproduction, and in the more advanced forms of manufacture...
Page 38 - Much mischief is already done by parents who try to live vicariously through their children. Children are sometimes compelled to fulfill the broken dreams of unhappy parents. But whereas most parents normally have hopes for their children, cloning parents will have expectations. In cloning, such overbearing parents will have taken at the start a decisive step that contradicts the entire meaning of the open and forward-looking nature of parent-child relations. The child is given a genotype that has...
Page 4 - And her statement will be entered into the record. [The prepared statement of Senator Hatch follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ORRIN G. HATCH, US SENATOR FROM UTAH Thank you, Mr.
Page 44 - Moral status of the cloned embryo. We hold that the case for treating the early-stage embryo as simply the moral equivalent of all other human cells (Position Number Two, above) is simply mistaken: it denies the continuous history of human individuals from the embryonic to fetal to infant stages of existence; it misunderstands the meaning of potentiality; and it ignores the hazardous moral precedent that the routinized creation, use, and destruction of nascent human life would establish. We hold...
Page 38 - When a couple now chooses to procreate, the partners are saying yes to the emergence of new life in its novelty, saying yes not only to having a child but also, tacitly, to having whatever child this child turns out to be. In accepting our finitude and opening ourselves to our replacement, we are tacitly confessing the limits of our control.
Page 44 - ... special respect" owed to nascent human life seems to have little or no operative meaning if cloned embryos may be created in bulk and used routinely with impunity.
Page 38 - ... emergence of new life in its novelty, saying yes not only to having a child but also, tacitly, to having whatever child this child turns out to be. In accepting our finitude and opening ourselves to our replacement, we are tacitly confessing the limits of our control. In this ubiquitous way of nature, embracing the future by procreating means precisely that we are relinquishing our grip, in the very activity of taking up our own share in what we hope will be the immortality of human life and...