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The Cloning Has Begun
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
By Linda Chavez
CNSNews.com Commentary

Once we start down the road to creating life for utilitarian purposes, there is no bright line that separates the permissible from the unthinkable.

It barely made news last week, but a hundred years from now, the big story out of 2001 may not be the attack on America or the war in Afghanistan but what happened in a petri dish in Worcester, Mass. For a few hours, three human embryos that had been created from single human cells taken from an adult man and infused into human eggs survived.

The cloning of human beings has begun.

Although the scientists who conducted this experiment claim their intention was not to create a human life but to create human embryonic stem cells, which could then be used for therapeutic purposes, the distinction will become meaningless. Does anyone doubt that others will follow in their footsteps and implant some future laboratory-cloned human embryos into a human womb? And there is nothing to stop them from doing so -- the process is perfectly legal, at least for now.

Although the House of Representatives passed a ban on human cloning in August, the Senate never acted. Several senators have now called the human cloning experiment troubling, including Sen. Patrick Leahy(D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee. But it remains to be seen whether they will act to try to stop further experiments. It is already illegal to use federal funds to clone human embryos. But will Congress take the next step and ban the procedure altogether?
(More: CNSNews.com News Source)
2001 © CNSNews.com.

Dan