What makes research cloning different from stem cell research -- what
pushes us over a moral frontier -- is that for the first time it sanctions
the creation of a human embryo for the sole purpose of using it for its parts.
Indeed, it will sanction the creation of an entire industry of embryo
manufacture whose explicit purpose is not creation of children but
dismemberment for research.
It is the ultimate commodification of the human embryo. And it is a
bridge too far. Reducing the human embryo to nothing more than a manufactured
thing sets a fearsome desensitizing precedent that jeopardizes all the other
ethical barriers we have constructed around embryonic research…..
Yesterday it was yes to stem cells with solemn assurances that there would
be no embryo manufacture. Today we are told: Forget what we said about embryo
manufacture; we now solemnly pledge that we will experiment on only the
tiniest cloned embryo, and never grow it -- and use it -- beyond that early
"blastocyst" stage.
What confidence can one possibly have in these new assurances? This is not
a slide down the slippery slope. This is downhill skiing. And the way to stop
it is to draw the line right now at the embryo manufacture that is cloning --
not just because that line is right, but because the very notion of drawing
lines is at stake.
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