Cloning and the Debate on Abortion
By Nigel Cameron and Lori Andrews,
Chicago Tribune
| 08. 08. 2001
Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori has announced
that he will begin human cloning in early 2002. Two hundred
couples desperately seeking to create children will become human
guinea pigs in a massive experiment. The odds are not in their
favor. In animals, cloning currently only results in a successful
pregnancy 3 to 5 percent of the time. And, even in those rare
instances, many of the resulting offspring suffer. One-third
die shortly before or right after birth. Other cloned animals
seem perfectly healthy at first and then suffer heart and blood
vessel problems, underdeveloped lungs, diabetes, immune system
deficiencies and severe growth abnormalities.
If an infectious disease were killing one-third of human infants,
we would declare it a public health emergency. We certainly
wouldn’t set up a clinic to enable it to happen. Yet despite
these grave risks, only five states have laws banning human
cloning. There is no federal law on the subject yet. Despite
widespread public opposition to human cloning, various researchers
and biotech companies have so far prevented the passage of such
a law.
This summer, however...
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