Friday, August 04, 2006

More misdirection from Governor Doyle

Governor Doyle's speech at the Center for American Progress was his usual unreflective effort. He says that he vetoed a bill that would have outlawed the most "promising techniques" used by scientists. What he vetoed was a bill that banned so-called "therapeutic cloning," technically known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. You take an unfertilized egg, remove the nucleus and then add the nucleus of a somatic (body) cell from the person for whom you want to clone an (almost) identical embryo.

People argue that this is not human cloning because they do not intend to implant the embryo and allow it to develop past the blastocyst stage. Embryo-destructive stem cell research has not advanced to the stage where there's any point in doing that. But you have created what is, at the very least, a living human "entity" and, since Governor Doyle in ending his speech, says the "good science" should be our guide, what do we do when the next step that is urged is to implant the cloned embryo? Does anyone doubt that scientists will claim that this too could result in miracle cures? Why is it the governor refers to this as a "technique" which he choose not to decribe. Why, in his attack ad against Mark Green, did he conflate this with stem cell research generally. When people don't want to speak plainly, I get nervous.

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