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IP: Re:Twins now outlawed
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 15:44:25 -0400
User-Agent: Microsoft-Entourage/9.0.2509 Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 13:50:27 -0500 Subject: Re: IP: Twins now outlawed From: Virginia Postrel <vpostrel () dynamist com> To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>The House banning of human cloning (news sample below) will open up fertility clinics to indictment, because the sundry fertility techniques have led to vast new quantities of twins and triplets, each one of them a technically induced human clone intended for birth.I was writing in opposition to this bill when everyone else was ignoring it, and I have great respect and affection for Stewart Brand, but this is incorrect. The twins and triplets who have become increasingly common are fraternal, not identical, the result of drugs that induce unusually high egg production or, in the case of in vitro fertilization, of implanting multiple fertilized eggs. The bill does threaten to outlaw a less common procedure that involves infusing an egg with another woman's cytoplasm to correct mitochondrial defects. It's a terrible bill, rushed through in a moral panic with almost no opposition. The science and disease groups all but ignored it while focusing all their attention on getting federal dollars for stem cell research. Some of the arguments apply to both cases, but the money-for-freedom trade the disease groups in particular are making is a dangerous game. And comments Tom Daschle made yesterday suggest that the Democrats may not block the bill in the Senate, as many observers had assumed. (I've got postings on this at http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html and earlier pieces at http://www.dynamist.com/cells.html and http://www.dynamist.com/latcells.html.) -- Virginia Postrel (virginia () dynamist com) Editor-at-large, Reason magazine Author, The Future and Its Enemies "Economic Scene" columnist, The New York Times Contributing editor, D Magazine http://www.dynamist.com | http://www.reason.com -- Read my commentary on The Scene http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html
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