Stem Cell Research is Illegal, Immoral and Unnecessary

“Banting and Best Isolate Insulin 1922.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dm22in.html (Retrieved 10 October 2000) American Diabetes Association: Diabetes Info. “The Diagnosis.” http://www.diabetes.org (Retrieved 10 October 2000) Hingley, Audrey. “Diabetes Demands a Triad of Treatments.” FDA Consumer May/June 1997: pg. 33. Lebovitz, Harold E. MD.

This might have made the movie enjoyable, but have put the idea of cloning in a bad light. There are many reasons why the public fears cloning, however, most fears are unsupported. People are afraid of cloning just as they are afraid of anything new in their lives. This immature fear led congressional representatives to an immediate ban of all research and practice of cloning. Cloning should have never been banned, the action taken was inappropriate and had absolutely no factual reasoning.

Stem Cells Should Not Be Used Therapeutically A stem cell is a cell in the body that can differentiate into almost any other type of cell in the body. Stem cells come from sites in the bone marrow, as well as the tissues of developing fetuses. The most controversial issue in stem cell therapy is the use of fetuses for their stem cells. Scientists want to clone human embryos, and use the stem cells long before the embryo matures (when it is only about 36 cells). This causes a large amount of unease in society, because people fear that stem cells and therapeutic cloning will lead us into disgusting and horrible experimental practices, as well as therapies.

The case against cloning, including therapeutic cloning, has mainly been argued on grounds of morality. Opponents have warned that creating embryos through cloning for the purpose of research (with the full intention of destroying them later) is a breathtakingly radical enterprise. For the first time in history, human lives will be created for the explicit purpose of exploitation. Such considerations have led activist Jeremy Rifkin to opine that the cloning debate is to the 21st century what the slavery debate was to the 19th. Unfortunately, we live in a time of widespread and extreme non-judgmentalism, an era when many Americans simply do not respond to moral arguments in public policy debates.

Other misconceptions focus on the societal problems resulting from cloning. Many of these misconceptions are only valid in a society without regulations or laws of any kind. People tend to forget that along with new technological developments come rules and guidelines to prevent the nightmarish scenarios that many believe will come true. Each of these misconceptions results from a distortion of the truth. Yet Congress seems hell-bent on stopping the medical advances that cloning can ma... ... middle of paper ... ...one became pregnant and gave birth.

Accessed November 19, 2013. 6. Claiborn K, Stoffers D. Toward a cell-based cure for diabetes: advances in production and transplant of beta cells. The Mount Sinai Journal Of Medicine, New York [serial online]. August 2008;75(4):362-371.

A good number of those stem cells that are used in this research have resulted from days-old human embryos through a process that destroys human embryos. (“Stem Cell Research Gets a Reprieve.”) “In 2001, President George W. Bush restricted federal funding for research on stem cells obtained from human embryos because the technology required the destruction of human life.” (Park) This restriction was seen as a compromise that allowed future research while allowing the door to be open to the destruction of future human lives. This compromise is a touchy subject that not very many people are informed about. The stem cell research should not use an embryo because there are other ways of getting similar research results without taking a human life. Such as using bone marrow, using cord blood, or turning mature cells into stem-like cells.

Scientifically, an embryo does not begin to live until 14-15 days after conception. The stem cells are taken 6-7 after conception when the embryo is a big mass of cells. This is where the controversy begins. People that are “pro-life” and many churches do not believe in growing embryonic stem cells in laboratories and then discarding them as need. In their eyes, this is murder to an unborn fetus and that this is morally wrong.

Human cloning still has a long way to go and much research is needed on this subject. Unfortunately, research is banned and society's ignorance prohibits such expansion in this field. Cloning is not as monstrous as the media makes it out to be. "It would be a shame if frightened politicians slammed the door on one of the most exciting and important scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century" (Dasbach, Libertarian Party 2). "Yes, cloning of human beings does raise serious ethical issues, but those issues are best addressed by individuals, doctors, and scientists-not politicians" (Dasbach, Libertarian Party 2).

Yet a law permitting research cloning, while forbidding the birth of a cloned child, would require the destruction of nascent human life. Secondly, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies.