Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Dr. Frankenstein, Call your Office

Just when I start getting all optimistic and postmillenial about the future, I read this article about how far human cloning has already gone. Cloning plan poses new ethical dilemma

Of course, they're doing all this for the "common good" ... which frightens me even more. To paraphrase Einstein (again), God doesn't play dice with the universe. It seems that modern science, on the other hand, views unborn humanity as their own personal craps table. A sampling ...

In 2004, a team of scientists from Seoul University lead by Professor Woo Suk Hwang became the first in the world to create a cloned human embryo. The team was able to extract fresh eggs from women who agreed to give their eggs purely for the project. In May this year, the team asserted their world-leading status by announcing that they had used the cloning process to create embryonic stem cells specially tailored to patients with a variety of different medical conditions, a vital step towards new therapies. The team gathered 185 eggs from 18 women. They are now believed to have created more than 60 clones from eggs taken from donors who give up between 15 to 20 eggs at a time.


..and...

Although Chinese scientists have yet to announce the creation of any cloned human embryos, the science has been given the government's full backing. A recent British delegation to visit Chinese labs was staggered by the level of commitment and noted that the country was well placed to exploit US links.