A Perverted Distinction

In the Executive Order authorizing Federal funding of ESCR Monday, there was a distinction made between therapeutic and reproductive cloning.  It's a distinction that has been endorsed by people across the political spectrum, even by some very confused pro-life politicians.  President Obama said that he opposed and would not fund reproductive cloning; the Order authorizes funding of therapeutic cloning.  There is no difference in the procedure of cloning in either case.  A cloned human being is created.  The only distinction is what can be done with the cloned human being.

A ban on reproductive cloning allows a cloned human being to be created, but requires that the nascent human being be destroyed rather than being implanted in a womb and allowed to continue its development, as it would otherwise do.

Therapeutic cloning creates the very same kind of nascent human life and then experiments on it in a way that necessarily destroys it.

So the Federal government's current position is that human life can be created by the cloning process, and it can be used for any purpose as long as its killed before it reaches the next stage of development.  The one thing we can't use cloning for is to actually bring a baby through gestation and birth.  That is a perverted distinction that intentionally sophistic.

Comments

[occasional reader]

Melinda, before concluding that the distinction is perverse, you might consider a few questions:

What would be the purpose behind cloning human beings for reproductive purposes?

Would that purpose carry as much weight as the purposes behind therapeutic cloning?

Does reproductive cloning have any troublesome consequences that do not accompany therapeutic cloning?

[David]

This is actually worse than cloning for life. It is an incredibly evil proposition to hold and yet he along with the rest of the main stream media holds this up as a virtue. Do people not consider to any depth their own positions?

[Sage S.]

What would be the purpose behind cloning human beings for reproductive purposes?
- The same purpose for fertilizing any egg on a petri dish and implanting the zygote in a womb - to get a woman pregnant.

Would that purpose carry as much weight as the purposes behind therapeutic cloning?
- Killing a human zygote (a nascent human being) is no more justifiable than killing a human being at any other stage of development for "therapeutic" gene harvesting. The purposes behind carrying a child to gestation are as valuable as life itself.

Does reproductive cloning have any troublesome consequences that do not accompany therapeutic cloning?
- I am no genetic scientist; reproductive cloning might involve physical difficulties or risks for the mother (I am no advocate of this practice). Therapeutic cloning has only one guaranteed result - ending the life of a nascent human being.

Why are so many so committed to this practice when all of the viable leads have come from non-destructive stem cell research?

[Brad]

Good question to end with Sage S, the culture of death, seems to be alive. It's evidenced in proactive efforts to end life as often as is possible in as many stages and situations as are possible. It looks like a conspiracy to me. ;-)

[Giles Corey]

Women discard unfertilized eggs at the rate of about one a month for 30-40 years. Is a blastocyst created by this massively unnatural method, or even plain old in vitro fertilization for that matter, human if it is never implanted? As many as 60-80% of fertilized eggs do not attach to the uterine wall or remain attached or functional 7 days past fertilization. If the genetic material in a woman's egg is replaced with genetic material from a cell elsewhere in her body and that blastocyst is harvested to create treatments or replacement parts for the woman what sin has been committed?