The
former head of the President’s Council on Bioethics, Dr Leon Kass,
says that the validation of reprogramming is an opportunity to pass
long-delayed legislation in the US. 

“Reprogramming
of human somatic cells to pluripotency is an enormously significant
achievement, one that boosters of medical progress and defenders of
human dignity can celebrate without qualification… The ethical and
political benefits may be equally great. The alleged need for
so-called therapeutic cloning — cloning embryos for research — is
now passé. We can therefore disentangle the “life issue”
of embryo-destruction from the “dignity issue” of baby
manufacture, and enact a legislative ban on cloning and other
degrading forms of baby-making, as recommended unanimously by the
President’s Council on Bioethics: Prohibit all attempts to conceive
a child by any means other the union of egg and sperm, both obtained
from adults.” ~ NRO,
Nov 21

 

• Author
• Recent Posts

Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

Latest posts by Michael Cook (see all)

• How long can you put off seeing the doctor because of lockdowns? - December 3, 2021
• House of Lords debates assisted suicide—again - October 28, 2021
• Spanish government tries to restrict conscientious objection - October 28, 2021