Minnesota Moves Ahead with Prohibition on Human Cloning
by David Prentice
March 18, 2011
Minnesota House and Senate committees have approved on voice votes, bills that would prohibit human cloning for any purpose; the bills have now been referred to further committees. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act, companion bills SF 695 and HF 998, would specifically prohibit creation of cloned human embryos for any purpose, but would not affect any stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research. Some have proposed using cloning (technically termed somatic cell nuclear transfer) to create embryos, which would then be cannibalized for their stem cells, even though no one has yet successfully harvested stem cells from cloned human embryos, and only one lab has even been able to create a handful of clones.
Most scientists have turned their backs on cloning (nuclear transfer) technology, including Ian Wilmut, who is the cloner of Dolly the sheep. This is because nuclear transfer cloning techniques can be abused to create born human clones. In addition, newer techniques can reprogram skin cells into “induced pluripotent stem cells” (iPS cells) that act like embryonic stem cells yet potentially match the patient from whom they were created, by methods that are cheaper and easier than nuclear transfer cloning, and bypass the ethical problems in use of embryos, eggs, or cloning.
The Minnesota Medical Association has come out against the cloning prohibition bills, and in support of nuclear transfer cloning both for experiments as well as for born human clones. They say in the last paragraph of their press release:
“The MMA supports research on multipotent stem cells (including adult and cord blood stem cells); using somatic cell nuclear transfer technology in biomedical research (therapeutic cloning); the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer technology for producing a human child (reproductive cloning), and strong public support of federal funding for research involving human pluripotent stem cells.”
So, they support anything and everything.
UPDATE
The MMA have now updated their press release with a correction, noting that MMA supports cloning of human embryos for experiments, and opposes gestating cloned human embryos to birth.
Family Research Council is a 501c(3) non-profit organization. If this post has been helpful to you, please consider a gift to help us continue to advance Faith, Family, and Freedom.
By: Dr. Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D. | March 19, 2011 at 12:30 am
This Minnesota cloning “ban” would not ban any human cloning. Similar to the erroneous “scientific” definitions of “cloning” in the Weldon/Brownback cloning “bans” in 2001, this Minnesota “ban” mis-defines “cloning” only in terms of one cloning technique, SCNT, and therefore it would not cover any of at least a dozen other kinds of human cloning techniques, e.g., germ line cell nuclear transfer (GLCNT) used now for years by researchers like Gearhardt, “twinning” (blastomere separation, blastocyst splitting, embryo multiplication – the premier form of cloning) used by IVF and other ART research laboratories and “infertility clinics”, pronuceli transfer, mitochondria transfer, and dozens of other genetic engineering techniques. Nor would it even ban human cloning by the SCNT technique, because the “product” as defined in the bill’s formal definition bears no resemblance to what the real “product” of SCNT would be. That is, the mitochondrial DNA from the donor cell is NOT transferred (and therefore not in the final cloned embryo), and the “foreign” mitochondrial DNA in the enucleated oocyte used remains in the cloned embryo. Therefore the real “product” of SCNT could not possibly be “genetically virtually identical to an existing or previously existing human organism”; indeed, it would be genetically unique – and if “stem cells” from these cloned embryos are injected into patients they will cause turmors and severe immune rejection reactions even if the patient’s own cells were cloned. Futhermore, the “exceptions” in this bill, as in the Weldon/Brownback bills, would allow many of the kinds of cloning noted above; they just call it “genetic engineering”, or “molecular” cloning, etc. One would think that people could learn since 2001. Very disappointing.