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To Be or not to Be?

The legal and moral debate over cloning is likely to be long and complicated. Until 1997,when Dr. Ian Wilmut, an embryologist from Edinburgh, Scotland, announced that he had successfully cloned an adult sheep, most scientists thought the cloning of mammalian, not to mention human, embryos would not occur for many years (the term cloning refers to a technique where the nucleus of an egg is replaced by a cell nucleus from a living adult; the resulting embryo is a genetic carbon copy of the adult.).

But nowadays with the massive cloning of a human embryo looming on the horizon, lawyers, politicians, and policymakers are grappling with the complexities of the issue. Would human clones be patentable by the cloner, or would the clones retain intellectual property rights over their genetic material? Since they would be a product of replication rather than procreation, would they be considered humans, covered by all existing laws? And what about human-animal hybrids? Could someone patent and enslave an entire race of human-animal hybrids? Is it possible a weapons contractor could count on patent protection to market an army of disposable human clones so long as the clones were genetically altered in some, perhaps tiny, way?

Despite the opposition of religious groups who say embryos are humans who are killed in the process of extracting stem cells, Parliament in the UK legalized therapeutic cloning at the beginning of the 21st century, while outlawing the placement of a cloned embryo into a woman's uterus. The view seems to have prevailed in Britain that it is more ethical to use scientific knowledge to relieve existing human disease than it is to block this research. Nevertheless, a British group, the Pro-Life Alliance, attacked the new bill in a 2001 lawsuit, arguing that a cloned egg didn't qualify as an embryo. Their suit won in trial court, with the ironic result that human reproductive cloning became legal in the UK. In any case, the trial court's decision was reversed on appeal, and reproductive cloning is again illegal.

There is no international consensus on the subject. Unlike the UK, for example, Germany bans research that "does not benefit the embryo itself." Meanwhile, in the US, a Bush administration policy bans the use of federal funds for research involving cloning, but until a law passes like the one Bush has been lobbying for, therapeutic cloning is permitted in privately funded research.

 

3. Sum up the text above in about 100 words pointing out the following :

1)The legal issues connected with cloning.

2)Laws on cloning in the UK.

3)Lack of international consensus.

4. Read the text, explain and translate the underlined words.

New Jersey Law: Sending in the Clones.

The New Jersey state legislature recently passed a "clone and kill" bill that allows the creation of cloned human embryos that can be implanted into a woman's womb and then destroyed at any point during their development for use in scientific research. As expected, New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey signed the bill making it the most extreme law ever passed regarding human cloning and embryonic stem-cell research.



Supporters say it is an innocuous and forward-looking law opposed only by extremists. But the new statute will have morally disastrous effects. Most notably, it creates a commercial market for the body parts of unborn children. It authorizes the commercial traffic of cloned children and will inevitably lead to contracts between cloning entrepreneurs and gestating women.

The law does make cloning a crime of the first degree. But cloning is defined in an unprecedented way: "cultivating" the cell "through the egg embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual." That means the crime of cloning would not occur until a child was possibly weeks or months old. That further means the only way to avoid the crime of cloning would be to kill the child – even after birth.

Now it might be said that cloned children would not be allowed to develop until the newborn stage. The problem is that no woman contracted to carry a cloned child could be forced to abort the child. So if the woman changes her mind while carrying the child and decides to forego abortion, cloned children will be born.

These are just a few of the problems opponents of therapeutic cloning and embryonic stem-cell research feared. Worse, ethical research options are available that can accomplish the same and greater goals. Specifically, research on adult stem cells harvested from umbilical cord blood, bone marrow and cadavers has provided cures for thousands of individuals with varied diseases for more than a decade.

Sadly, the media and star-quality spokesmen like Christopher Reeve are deceived by the heavyweight lobbying of biotech interests and their friends, keeping the truth safely under wraps.

5. Answer the questions.

1) What is the essence of a "clone and kill" bill?

2) What does the author mean by his statement “the new statute will have morally disastrous effects”?

3) Why is the word "cultivating" objectionable in the definition of the crime in question?

6. What is your personal attitude to the creation of human clones? Can you name any examples when scientific research, however morally objectionable it was, meant progress for humanity?

 

II.1. Define the word “euthanasia “. Have you heard anything about a law regulating this action (in this country or abroad)?

2. Read the text writing down vocabulary pertaining to law.

 


Date: 2015-01-12; view: 692


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