The lack of candor and honesty by some cloning proponents in the U.S. demeans democracy. When it was announced that Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the sheep, intends to create cloned embryos for use in research, the British press and some U.S. stories acknowledged that the "product" of somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning is a human embryo. Perhaps that is because in the UK, there is less concern that cloning for research purposes creates and then destroys human life.



But here, where the creation of human life for purposes of destruction is of great moral concern, many proponents refuse to admit that the same procedure--SCNT--actually creates a human organism. I recently testified in Missouri, and witnessed the most ludicrous display of biological post modernism I have ever seen. Proponents of therapeutic cloning insisted that cloned embryos aren't really embryos, they merely are cell lines. When asked if that was so, why the need to ban implantation, since mere cell lines implanted in wombs can never become a baby, the response by one witness was that these cells could become "sentient" in 40 days in a womb and that THEN, they would be human life. This is utter nonsense. But that is their story and they are sticking to it.



This would all be laughable--except that it often works. Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri, for example, is an ardent pro life advocate. He claims he would support the proposed cloning ban if he thought cloning created a new human life. Given the scientific facts, his support should be a given. But he has indicated instead that he might veto the proposed ban on cloning because he doesn't believe cloning makes life since sperm and egg do not meet. Talk about willfull ignorance!



So, in the UK, cloning indisputably creates new human life. But in the US, many pretend that it does not. Same procedure. Same life created. Different politics. Different story. Pathetic.

As a proud senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, I am often attacked by my debating opponents as being part of a "creationist" think tank, the idea being that my secular-based advocacy about bioethics is really religion in disguise. This canard is a reference to Discovery's work in "intelligent design," which uses science to investigate whether the philosophy of evolution, e.g., that all life is a result of random processes, is supported by the evidence.



When this point is raised, I patiently reply that ID is not "creationism," which accepts a "Biblical" account of the emergence of life, it is science, and that in any event, I am not part of the ID work at Discovery. Moreover, the attempts by the Science and Bioethics Establishments to avoid a debate on the merits of ID by portraying the theory as religious rather than scientific is fast losing steam.



Deomontrating this last point, witness the op/ed article written by Discovery Institute senior fellow Michael Behe in today's New York Times, which introduces ID theory in terms anyone can understand. The key sentence: "...[I]t is the profound appearance of design in life that everyone is laboring to explain, not the appearance of natural selection or the appearance of self organization."



Again, this isn't my field of expertise. But the issue of ID is worthy of respectful debate and should be accepted or rejected on the merits of the arguments proponents present, not dismissed out of hand as religion. To do otherwise is intellectual laziness and/or the expression of fear at confronting an explanation for biological life that may be as plausible as the idea that the whole kit and kabootle is a mere accident of physical interactions.



(Warning: The link to the New York Times may require registration.)

To the best of my knowledge, there are four states threatened with legalized assisted suicide this year: Hawaii, California, Arizona, and Vermont. Good news from the Aloha State: A committee has turned thumbs down on legalization. It isn't over yet, but it seems highly unlikely at this point that the bill will be able to move forward. Now, if we can get the same result in California...Speaking of which: Here is a fair story about yesterday's committee hearing on the pending California legislation.

I will be testifying today in Sacramento against legalizing assisted suicide in California. As I was preparing for my appearance, I found some interesting information about how assisted suicide in Oregon is actually conducted.



Oregon voters were assured during the campaign to legalize assisted suicide, that the matter would be between patients and family doctors. In actuality, Compassion in Dying of Oregon, a euthanasia advocacy group, is involved in the vast majority of these deaths. According to a signed statement by George Eighmey, executive director, attached to the tax returns of the group, in 2004, CID participated in 29 out of 35 assisted suicides in Oregon. This not only demonstrates that assisted suicide ideologues are running the show in Oregon but it is deeply involved with the state government since the official statistics have not actually been published yet.



According to CID, pain or fear of pain was not apparently a major issue in any assisted suicide. Rather, it was "fear of loss of control" fear of "dependence on others," and "concern over loss of autonomy." These are important issues. But people can be helped to adjust to these wrenching changes without facilitating their suicides. Indeed, hospice does it all the time.



So this is the bottom line: legalized assisted suicide in Oregon is not a compassionate last resort for unbearable suffering: It licenses sheer Kevorkianism.

The cloning crowd's ability to denigrate adult stem cell research is quickly losing steam. Check out this report that bone marrow stem cells may be pluripotent and can grow heart cells. It's not over yet, but all very encouraging. Indeed, I believe this cultural struggle will be won if and when the evidence of the efficicacy of adult stem cells in regenerative medicine becomes so convincing that even the New York Times will acknowledge it.

I have an article in today's Daily Standard about the "anything goes" ideology that now permeates biotechnology. Check it out in the "What's New" department of my WEB site.

I testified alongside Dr. David Prentice in Missouri yesterday urging support of legislation that would outlaw all human cloning in the "Show Me" state. Here is a pretty fair newspaper description of the event. The text of my presentation is available on my WEB site under "What's New."

For anyone interested: I have an extended article in the February AMERICAN SPECTATOR about cloning, biotechnology, and the anything goes mentality that is infecting the Science Establishment. It is not available on line at this time.

I have been asked by several correspondents if I intend to write again on the Schiavo case. The answer is that I don't know. What else is there to say that hasn't already been written? Terri is the victim of a legal system that has become obsessed with legal process at the expense of justice. The trial in her case was not originally well handled and the courts are hanging that record around her neck like a millstone and refusing to truly and thoroughly examine new facts that have come to light. And the media have been generally complicit by only selectively reporting the facts about her case. It is a travesty any way you measure it. Here are some of my previous writings. Life, Death, and Silence,No Mercy In Florida, and Saving Terri Schiavo. Other articles can be accessed at my WEB site by hitting the "articles" link.

The National Geographic has clued into the fact that biotechnologists are creating human/animal hybrids, known as chimeras. This is not news. Dolly the cloned sheep was created in the first place so that the Roslin Institute could genetically engineer sheep to have a human gene. Their purpose was laudable. They hoped to reap useful substances from the milk of genetically modified ewes to use in making human medicines, a process known as "pharming."

But now, Irving Weissman of Stanford, is talking seriously about manufacturing a mouse with a human brain. Of course, he states that medical science will be advanced. The "anything goes" crowd in biotech always does. And he huffs and puffs that any legal moratorium on such activities would be to deny scientists their "freedom."

But these issues are too important to just let the scientists decide what is moral and what isn't. We are learning to change nature, including human biology, at the molecular level. The consequences from such research, both pro and con, will be profound. And since the scientists show no inclination to engage in any meaningful self- restraint, they force society to either set proper parameters or surrender control to them and hence create what could be called a scientocracy.

I do not reject inserting some human genes into animals to reap human-helping benefits. But we do have to figure out as a society how much human material in animals is too much human mateiral in animals. Unfortunately, it seems that the ideologues of biotechnology have no intention of giving us the space to have that discussion.