FC: Senate weighs complete cloning ban, already approved by House

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

See also:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50297,00.html
   By Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)
   2:00 a.m. Feb. 9, 2002 PST
   WASHINGTON -- It's been seven months since the House of
   Representatives voted to ban cloning, and the Senate is deciding
   whether to follow suit.
   This week, the Senate Judiciary committee met to decide whether to ban
   human embryo cloning completely, or to prohibit only the reproductive
   cloning of human beings while still allowing "therapeutic" cloning for
   experimental research. [...]

************

Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 18:06:53 -0500
From: Saul Kent <SaulKent () compuserve com>
Subject: Don't Let The Government Ban Therapeutic Cloning!

        Therapeutic cloning research could lead to cures
for heart disease, stroke, cancer, Alzheimer's disease and
other lethal conditions.  It could also lead to therapies to
reverse the infirmities and ravages of aging.

        The U.S. Senate is now debating The Human Cloning
Prohibition Act (S.790), which has already passed the House.
This bill could put scientists who conduct therapeutic cloning
research in prison for 10 years.

        The Life Extension Foundation urges you to contact
U.S. Senators to urge them to vote against this bill.  Information
about how to do so can be found on The Foundation's web site
(www.lef.org).  Also on the site is an interview with Mike West, Ph.D.,
the President and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology, and an article
entitled "Don't Let The U.S. Government Ban Therapeutic Cloning".

        Please send this message to everyone you know who is
interested in staying alive and healthy.

Saul Kent, Founder and Director
Life Extension Foundation

***********

Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2002 21:58:31 -0600
Subject: Re: FC: Responses to Center for Genetics and Society and ban on
        cloning
From: Virginia Postrel <virginia () dynamist com>
To: <declan () well com>
Message-ID: <B884B484.B24F%virginia () dynamist com>
In-Reply-To: <20020204211620.A16624 () cluebot com>
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
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> After much thought I've come to the following conclusion: if we are
> simply talking about the use of stem-cells/etc to learn how to clone
> replacement organs, I am very comfortable with this line of research.
> Furthermore, no one (save the Amish, Christian Scientists, and the
> Luddites), I believe, would be against that technology.

Judging from the mail you've posted, a number of your readers seem to be
unaware that the House has overwhelmingly passed (in last year's session)
and the White House has endorsed legislation that would make doing
this--transferring a nucleus to an enucleated egg **for the purpose of
cloning tissues or for basic cell research**, not only for reproductive
purposes--a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. This
would be a permanent ban, not a moratorium, and it is this sort of
legislation that the Center for Genetics and Society is supporting.

I wrote about this subject in The Wall Street Journal,
http://www.dynamist.com/opeds/cloning.html.

--
Virginia Postrel (vpostrel () dynamist com)
Author, The Future and Its Enemies
"Economic Scene" columnist, The New York Times
Contributing editor and "Spaces" columnist, D Magazine
http://www.dynamist.com | http://vpostrel.com (The Scene)
--
Read about my book-in-progress at http://www.dynamist.com/lookandfeel.html




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