Keep cloning legal

In July of last year, the House of Representatives passed the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. The ban would criminalize human cloning, providing up to ten years in prison and a one million dollar fine for violators. Senator Brownback (R-Kan.) drafted a similar version of the bill for debate within the Democrat-controlled Senate, where there is considerably more opposition. In response to growing pressure to bring the issue to resolution, President Bush created the President's Council on Bioethics last November to further research the prospect of human cloning. Yet Bush has made his position on the issue clear; he believes all forms of human cloning should be banned, and supports the Prohibition Act passed by the House. \nBrownback and Bush must understand, though, that the issue is not so simple. Human cloning is more appropriately divided into two distinct categories: reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning. Both start the same way; a human cell, such as a skin cell, and a human egg are collected. The nucleus of the skin cell is removed, as are the egg's chromosomes. The nucleus is then fused with the stripped egg. The result is a cloned human embryo. The difference arises in the next. If the embryo is allowed to grow, then over the next nine months it will develop into a fully-formed human life. This is known as reproductive cloning. If, however, the growth of the embryo is halted in the blastocyst stage, when it consists of approximately 150 cells, the embryo can be mined for valuable stem-cells. This is known as therapeutic cloning, and is considered a reputable and promising possibility in the scientific and medical communities.\nBush feels differently. In an April address to the Senate, Bush asserted that "our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured," a gorgeously ignorant statement from a supposedly informed administrator. Bush comes from the ethical camp that believes embryos should be afforded the same rights as fully-formed humans, a notion that lacks scientific or logical support. It is this fuzzily defended belief that prompts rightist groups like the Republican National Coalition for Life to claim that "there is no difference" between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. What are not fuzzy, however, are the lives of the thousands of people who are suffering from the diseases and disorders that therapeutic cloning might one day help abate or cure.\nWhile it shows promise, therapeutic cloning is not yet feasible. Successful results are no less than a decade away. This is why therapeutic cloning should not only be legal, but federally funded. Private corporations will be hard-pressed to fund research that will not produce marketable results for ten to fifteen years. The effort must be supported by the government: the research done at the universities.\nWith scientific progress and the acquisition of new technology, we have an obligation to maintain a code of ethics and move forward responsibly. We also, however, have a obligation to pursue safe and promising areas of medical research that might, in the end, save lives. It is ignorant and irresponsible for us as a society to reject an avenue of research solely on the ill-defended basis that a 150-cell blastocyst has the same inalienable rights as you or I. We should ask not where life begins, at conception or thereafter, but where life ends, at a timely place or at the hands of a society too ignorant to make the right decision.