January 05, 2004, 1:46 p.m.
State of Cloning
An unprecedented law in New Jersey.

In New Jersey, Governor James McGreevey (D.) has signed into law the most permissive cloning legislation in the United States. Packaged as a benevolent "stem-cell-research bill" which claims to prohibit human cloning, the fine print is something different. The law allows the cloning of human embryos as long as you kill them.

In practice, of course, don't expect to see a cloned child tomorrow — or in nine months. But the New Jersey law gives an unprecedented statehouse green light to the biotech industry. As recent developments in Massachusetts make all too clear, human cloning is where the money is going.

At the bill's signing at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange on Sunday, actor/advocate Christopher Reeve said, "What it's about, this legislation, is about whether or not we have the courage to protect the freedom of ethical and responsible scientific inquiry." Very few are willing to challenge a paralyzed Superman on the point.

Not everyone paints such a dreamy picture of the law, however. In a letter sent to New Jersey's governor last year, members of the president's commission on bioethics — including a professor from McGreevey's state, Princeton's Robert P. George — warned of the bill's dangers: "[W]hat if a gestating woman has second thoughts and decides not to abort the developing fetus? Would a court be asked to enforce a contract for abortion? We hope and trust that no court would do that. But then we would have what the sponsors of the legislation say they oppose: the birth of human clones."

The ethicist noted:

Although the legislation purports to ban trafficking in fetal body parts for "valuable consideration," it expressly permits "reasonable payment" for "removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transplantation, or implantation of embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue." This is a virtual invitation to cloning entrepreneurs to conduct in the State of New Jersey what would amount to fetal farming for research, presumably including experimental treatments. There seems to be nothing in the legislation to prevent cloning entrepreneurs from paying women a "reasonable" fee to gestate embryos and submit to abortions for the production of human bodily tissues and organs. The entrepreneurs could then charge a "reasonable" fee to their customers for "processing," "preserving," "storing," "transplanting," or "implanting" fetal cadavers and tissues.

Trenton's milestone is instructive. "S-1909 has blown the cover off of the true agenda of the biotechnology industry," says Wesley J. Smith, author of The Culture of Death. "Rather than restricting therapeutic cloning to the harvesting of stem cells from early embryos, as the industry often pretends in the media, the Biotechnology Industry Organization's (BIO) enthusiastic support of the New Jersey bill proves that [pro-cloning types] want an unlimited license to harvest cloned human life from inception through the ninth month." Says Smith, "Experiments have already been conducted using cows in which cloned embryos were implanted, gestated to the early fetal stage, aborted, and their organs harvested for transplantation. The New Jersey law would permit this same cloned organ farming to be done in humans. It is urgent that we keep the radical New Jersey cloning license before the public and hold the industry to account every time it pretends to only want access to cloned embryonic stem cells."

New Jersey Right to Life's Marie Tasy says, "This law will allow human lives to be treated as a commodity, creating classes of lesser humans to be created and sacrificed for the good of humanity." She calls "the unethical practices authorized" under the new law "the ultimate desecration of human life."

A year ago this month, President Bush asked Congress for a total ban on human cloning. He hasn't gotten one. And he won't get one until there are more votes for one in the Senate. With the likes of Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) coalitioning and misinforming members and media, lobbying for their proposed partial ban, that's not happening this session. In addition to reelecting their ally in the White House, cloning opponents would be wise to set their sights on the Senate in this election year.