Does Minnesota need a law to prohibit human cloning?
Posted at 5:00 AM on March 17, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(42 Comments)
Filed under: Politics/Government, Religion/Ethics, Science/Technology
A bill that would ban human cloning in Minnesota is making its way through the Legislature. The bill's sponsor says he is promoting it as a preventive measure. Today's Question: Does Minnesota need a law to prohibit human cloning?
Comments (42)
I enjoyed the responses from Chris, Dave, and Pat Carney .
No. I don't see a problem with it. The fear is that cloning evokes notions of pod people and tampering too much with nature. It also threatens our idea of individuality. I think these fears are misplaced.
At one time transplanting organs was considered repulsive. As weird and novel as something sounds I think we should not give in to what may only be an imagined threat.
I cannot believe the priorities of some of our legislators. Our infrastructure is abysmal, the poverty level in MN has skyrocketed, and our once top-notch education system is suffering from "semi-permanent" budget cuts. Why are we wasting even one second talking about banning cloning and building a stadium so the rich people can "play ball".
Could someone please tell me how we are supposed to fight the robot overlords in the future if we take cloning off the table??? We might as well give up now!
No. What a waste of time. Wake up Republicans and get out of the stone age. Abortion is legal. Embryos end up as trash. Why can't research be performed on something that is just going to be medical waste?
Before the law goes into effect, (assuming it does), let's clone Charlie Sheen.
If you are a currently-seated legislator that was elected ONLY BECAUSE of your positions on banning human cloning, ending abortions, and ridding the state of embryonic stem-cell research - to the exclusion of all other issues! - please stand up.
No one? Okay, then. Please, then, make yourselves useful and do what we voted you into office to do. Thank you.
Yes, it's a very relevant and hot issue and needs to be addressed yesterday...unless they're cloning Natalie Portman. I could make an exception for that.
I've never used the term "Red Herring" as often as I have this political season. Are the cloning bill and the nuclear power bill going to be followed by the apple pie bill?
Shame. The addle-brained Democrat majority is replaced by the deluded Republican majority. We are in worse trouble than reported because the legislature fiddles while the state burns.
Get a bucket, folks. We'll need to do this ourselves.
Again the legislature just "doesn't get it." Why isn't it working on first priorities like the income shortfall? No, we don't need this law. Tom
This bill is absolutely unnecessary. Worse, it's actually incredibly damaging. Despite what Michael may be saying (over and over again) on this comment board, this is just the latest attack on stem cells. The fact it says "cloning" isn't fooling anyone. The MCCL has tried (and tried, and tried) to pass this and it always fails because people see through this as dangerous and potentially harmful to business, research and health care. I look forward to MCCL's glee when it does pass, and the glee from the rest of us when Dayton knocks this into 1957 where this type of shortsighted legislation belongs.
Here is the full text of the bill, H.F. 998, in case you are interested in reading what the bill says:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H0998.1.html&session=ls87
No the law is not necessary.
What is more that it is drawn so broadly as to stop using cloning of any human tissue.
Remember gentle reader in any conflict between science and superstition, the Rethuglicans will take superstition ever time. This is just one more example of throwing red meat to the Religious Right (which is neither).
What, exactly, is progressive about destroying innocent human life, which is what therapeutic cloning, abortion, and embryonic stem cell research do? I'll grant that you have a good motive, wanting to improve someone's life or save someone's life, but that does not justify killing someone else to do it. The end doesn't justify the means, and a truly progressive society would understand that.
And I'm just as critical of the political right on this question when it comes to things like waterboarding, pre-emptive warfare, wars that violate the just war theory (such as Iraq and Afghanistan), and capital punishment. I think all four of those practices are barbaric.
I would have been a loyal Democrat were it not for the secularization of the party after the 1968 convention. What was once largely the party of working-class Catholics became the party of the secular elite, and I can no longer in good conscience support that party.
A party that truly cared about the poor and vulnerable would speak up for those who are most weak and defenseless, unborn children, the disabled, and the elderly, and stand for protecting the lives of these people instead of embracing embryonic stem cell research, abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.
A society is only as strong as its weakest members, and the way we treat the unborn, the elderly, and the disabled in this society shows we are a very weak society indeed.
The Democrats were once the party that stood for working families and the poor and vulnerable in our society, and now there is no political party that does that anymore. What a sad society we are indeed.
The question misses the bill's actual intent. As reproductive human cloning is not currently possible, this bill is meant to outlaw embryonic stem cell research. The process called somatic cell nuclear transfer is specifically banned in this bill. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is a key process in creating new embryonic stem cell lines. The "cloning" title is intentionally there to trick people into thinking this is not a radical anti-science bill.
This is a joke, right? There's a bill? Really? I thought they were going to focus like a laser on jobs, jobs, jobs? (Or was it budget, budget, budget?) Let this session be a reminder to independents. When you elect Republicans they have this way of acting exactly like Republicans.
Research on human cloning cannot currently receive federal funding. Therefore, any such research would involve a massive injection of private sector money in the state. Anyone backing such a law cannot simultaneously claim to promote high-tech, twenty-first century jobs in Minnesota.
This was proposed by the same politicians who tell anybody who will listen that there's already too much government regulation and control. The free market is fine for other things, but they want the government to limit research and development?
Look, I'm not saying there aren't ethical considerations; but along the scale of logical to crazy this proposal seems to fall somewhere between hypocritical political pandering and flat-out "do what I say, not as I do."
With exponential growth in technology, I wonder about how our ethical development is keeping pace. We use to have more time to think about the ethical implications for a particular technology. No longer. To be clear, I am pro-choice (that is not the basis for my feelings on this). I just believe we need to take more time. However, I'm not sure we can anymore. At least, I don't believe we will.
NO! There are lots of more urgent and important issues facing our legislature. I'd like a job, better health care, lower property taxes, protection for our natural resources and other basics...and so would many in my community in northern Minnesota!!
I think there should be specific limitations on cloning in Minnesota. I'd like to see a law making it illegal to clone either Tim Pawlenty or Michele Bachmann. One of each of these has already been too much for the human population to endure.
Cloning not permitted if the one to be cloned is a legislator.
As others have said, our budget is a mess and that needs to be the focus. The rest of this is red meat for various political fundraising activities.
That's right. In the Land of 10,000 Bans, let's just make another law and poof, like magic, the problem will go away. Wow! See how easy it is? This goes beyond cloning. It's just another example of the idiotic concept that we have to ban EVERYTHING!!! Now who is going to police this new law? Don't the police have enough work to do? Of course tax payers (or deficits) will pay for this new law. Strained judicial systems will have to bear the burden of yet ANOTHER ban. The more laws are passed, the more lawlessness will prevail.
Let me guess..... religious right?
Why has such a group become so wrong?
Are they going to ban Twins?
So there will be no Minnesota Twins?
(Sorry joke needed to be said. ... well maybe not...)
Honestly, its another attempt to kill progress with greater understanding and be at the forfront and have a GOOD understanding on something that IS GOING TO HAPPEN.
Now, once we figure out if we can do it, we do not have to do it. How about looking at the 'reasons' to and not to do the cloning..... Religious right should concentrate on ethics, not the technology.
To know how to do, which is what research is about, is not the same question of "IF we should do" which they might have a better chance at.
I should also add that I believe abortion should be prohibited for similar reasons to the ones I outlined above for prohibiting embryonic stem cell research and human cloning.
Absolutely. From the moment of fertilization, a human zygote is a unique individual with his/her own DNA and body. All that remains is growth from there. It isn't a walrus or fish or zebra growing in the womb of a woman, but a unique individual no less human than any of us are.
We can use adult stem cells to grow new organs. There is already a skin gun that was developed to replace the skin of burned victims using their own adult stem cells to create the skin cells. Reproductive cloning means taking the means of creating human life into your own hands and playing God, which is wrong. Additionally, each cloned person or embryo is also just as human as you or I are, and creating human life by any means for the purpose of harvesting organs or ripping it apart to benefit someone else's life is barbaric. The end doesn't justify the means. The end, improving or saving someone's life, is good, but destroying or wounding someone else in order to do that, is wrong. Both the end and means need to be just in order for an act to be just, and that is why embryonic stem cell research and cloning are morally wrong and should be prohibited. The people advocating for these things have good intentions, but the good they want to accomplish doesn't justify destroying or wounding others to achieve that.
No. Especially since the bill in question is poorly written by people with virtually no scientific background with a hidden political agenda.
A solution looking for a problem.
The bill's sponsor needs to learn about a little life tool called "setting priorities".
Passing a law like this would make it so that when the time comes that usefull tissue and other body parts can be manufactured naturely, politicians would be forced to repeal this law making them look like they endorse mad scientists.
If my wifes sinal disks can be cloned so she wont need surgey every 4 years i'll go with the scientests.
we need more science development and less interference govt should be a low priority!
The question to ponder is at what point does tinkering with cloning cause the death of a human being? Under what circumstance does someone get to make that call?
Where do you come up with these questions?
Cloning in Minnesota has to be the furthest thing from 99.9% of the population.
A better question for today might be “How can the people of Minnesota best help the people of Japan?”
∑
DTOM
NO. We don't need more regulation and bigger government. Let people and science be free from regulation and big government.
Boy you would think the republicans would agree with this, but then again they are the same people that balance budget deficits with tax cuts.
It's too late
Minnesota needs a ban on cloning about as much as we need a ban on time travelling or cold fusion. This is a non-issue that does not warrant the attention of state law.
Whatever congressperson introduced this useless and distracting legislation should be fired by his electorate at the next election.
No.
No.
I would say, unfortunately, yes. It's too bad some folks in our society simply can't behave themselves as they go and try and play God. I can't stand the fact that laws like this are be necessary, but it seems that morality, ethics, and plain old good sense are quickly running to extinction.
No. Especially when this is clearly just a distraction from what actually needs to be done.
Of course we need to talk about a ban on something. Republicans have no more solutions for real problems than they have a noticeable presence in the scientific community. Their complete lack of technical competence leaves them with a shortage of skills to address any real problems, so they clearly have to pick controversial subjects to jabber about and drum up anger and fear among their mentally deficient drones.
As for the actual need for a ban on clones, it's probably on the bottom of anyone's list of important subjects needing to be discussed in the next decade.
I would like the sponsors of this bill to answer the following questions: 1. How many jobs will this bill create in Minnesota? and 2. How will this bill help to a reduce the state's deficit? Oh wait, I forgot, it was the "clones" that caused the subprime mortgage crisis, tanked the economy, and are taking all the available jobs from non-cloned American Citizens!! This is an obvious attempt to get the conservative base in Minnesota riled up. This bill will likely keep jobs from coming to Minnesota as biotech companies pursuing embryonic research as a means to treat cancer, parkinsons, and other serious diseases go to other states.
No. Minnesota needs a well-balanced budget. Why in the world are we talking about cloning and beer on Sundays?
Of COURSE!!!! The threat of human cloning is an absolutely dire emergency. This legislation is WAY more important than solving our little budget problem. If our wise, discerning legislature doesn't act immediately, we're likely to be overrun by an army of clones. It's an obvious socialist plot to take away our guns and raise our taxes. Wake up, people, before it's too late!
Seriously, I don't think human cloning is a good idea, but this bill is blatant grandstanding.
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