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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
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Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review April 29, 2005 / 20 Nisan, 5765

The False Promise of ‘therapeutic’ cloning

By Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak

The Medicine Men
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | U.S. Senate Bill S. 658 introduced on April 21 would allow cloning of human embryos for use in research. The bill would exact severe criminal penalties for "reproductive" cloning, but would allow "therapeutic" cloning until the embryo is 14 days old.

Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sponsors of similar legislation in the past, introduced the bill, and Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., joined in sponsoring it this time. Specter, who is being treated with chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease, says he believes that he "may well be helped by stem cell research if it were to go forward."

The entire issue baffles many people. For example, why should "reproductive" cloning be punishable by 10 years in prison, while "therapeutic" cloning is made perfectly legal? And why did Arlen Specter talk about stem cell research while introducing a bill on cloning?

We believe the terms of this debate are intentionally deceptive.

Because most people are against human cloning, we think pro-cloners purposely confuse us about what they are hoping to do.

Even the United Nations General Assembly, by a 3-1 vote in early March, approved a resolution urging the world to "prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and protection of human life."

So the battle is on between the few who want cloning and the rest who don't.

Cloning legislation can be defeated when the rest of us understand the actual meaning of the terms being used, so let's clarify a few — starting with cloning.

There are three ways to create a human embryo. The first is by sexual intercourse. The second way is by in vitro fertilization, where the egg and sperm are introduced to each other in the laboratory.

The third is by cloning. This would involve surgically removing an egg from a woman's ovary, extracting the nucleus from that egg, and inserting the nucleus from a cell of the person being cloned. If the entire process worked well, the resulting genetically modified egg would have 46 chromosomes, would be a full human embryo, and might grow up into an almost identical twin (although younger) of the person being cloned.

Not surprisingly, the process of making a cloned embryo is both difficult and expensive.

The distinction between "therapeutic" and "reproductive" cloning is a sinister artifice.

Cloning is called "reproductive" when the cloned embryo is implanted in a woman and a baby is born. The birth of the resulting baby is the crime, not the cloning.

Cloning is called "therapeutic" when the human embryo or growing fetus is used in experiments looking for human cures, and would be legal as long as the developing cloned person is killed before it is born.

Bills to allow cloning have been sprouting like mushrooms in legislatures all over the state and federal landscape. New Jersey passed S. 1909 last year, making it legal to create an embryo by cloning, implant the cloned embryo in a woman, and allow gestation for nine months up to pre-birth.

Legislators in Texas, Delaware, Maryland, Illinois and Washington state have introduced similar bills. But whenever the true intent of a particular proposal is exposed, it loses support.

Now let's look briefly at stem cell research - which Arlen Specter and others so frequently mix in with the cloning debate.

Stem cell therapies have enjoyed success in human trials for treating heart disease, diabetes and Parkinson's, and have potential for producing viable treatments. No one is opposed to research with "adult" stem cells, because countless all-purpose, unspecialized cells are in everyone's bodies. As needed, our body transforms its stem cells into specialized cells, such as blood and nerve cells. And we don't have to be killed in the process of collecting a few of these cells.

Many are opposed, however, to the harvesting of embryonic stem cells because it requires killing the human embryo to obtain the stem cells. (President Bush limited federal funding for this kind of killing; he did not outlaw private funding.)

But that's not the only reason for the opposition.

Another is that embryos are hard to obtain outside the womb, either by in vitro or cloning methods.

Third, experimentally treating disease with stem cells extracted from embryos has so far been associated with intractable problems, such as tumors and a high immunologic rejection rate. These drawbacks in animal testing have been so severe that experimental human treatment trials are currently too dangerous.

So why do the media and legislators ignore the successes of non-embryonic or "adult" stem cell research, while promoting extraordinary curative claims for embryonic stem cell research?

And why is stem cell research so often linked with debates on cloning?

We think the answers may lie in the ardent appetite for human embryos.

The cloning process enables almost unlimited opportunity for researchers to experiment with unborn human beings. The ultimate intent of legislation that allows "therapeutic" cloning is to open a back door to fetal farming for spare parts and to foster eugenics with genetic engineering.

The key tactic has been diversionary. Cloning supporters distract us by saying that they conduct research on stem "cells" rather than "embryos"; that miraculous cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and Hodgkin's are just around the corner; and that we can support the foul deed because "reproductive" cloning is criminalized.

Be alert. Any legislation that allows human cloning, however it is defined, is profoundly ominous — and worthy of our best efforts to oppose it.

Editor's Note: Robert J. Cihak wrote this week's column. His wife, Mary Lynn Cihak, contributed a lot.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., is a multiple award winning writer who comments on medical-legal issues. Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Both JWR contributors are Harvard trained diagnostic radiologists. Comment by clicking here.

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