Women's Health and the Cloning Debate
By Elayne Clift,
Womens Feature Service
| 09. 16. 2002
American feminists and women's health activists are debating on the
difficult issue of human cloning and stem cell research. Human cloning
involves creating embryos with the intent of implanting them in women
to produce children. In therapeutic cloning on the other hand, genetic
material from a body cell is inserted into an egg cell, replacing the
nucleus. As the cell begins to divide, scientists believe stem cells
can be extracted and grown into tissue or organs. Thus, a kind of
'regenerative medicine' gives people access to therapies derived from
their own cells.
Last year, the
Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the US Congress
passed a bill banning all human cloning, a measure President Bush
supports. The bill, introduced by Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican
who has been called "the torchbearer of the Christian Right", called
for a total ban on human cloning, which would also preclude cloning
embryonic stem cells for research purposes, or 'therapeutic cloning'.
In
May 2002, the Senate countered with its own legislation designed to
foster scientific research. Their "Human Cloning Prohibition Act of
2002" would prohibit...
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