Logic, Defied or Defiled?

June 7, 2007

On 6 June 2007, the House of Representatives voted on HR 2560, a “bill to ban reproductive cloning.” Of those voting, 190 of the 221 Democrats, and 14 of 196 Republicans voted for it, resulting in a rejection of the bill 213-204. In an account by the Los Angeles Times, Diane DeGette stated, “The bill bans human reproductive cloning. Nothing more, nothing less. . . . It defies logic why anyone would vote against this bill.” Really?

Reproductive cloning is the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer, sometimes called simply “nuclear transfer,” to produce human beings. So-called “therapeutic cloning” or “research cloning” is the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer to produce human embryos who are then used for research, and perhaps at some future time, therapy. None of these pursuits are illegal in the United States at this time.

Those who oppose reproductive cloning are many, but the grounds for opposition are often unclear: human embryos are produced in both reproductive and therapeutic cloning. If the resulting embryos were not human, there would be no interest in producing them. On the other hand, for those who hold the embryo to be a vulnerable human being worthy of protection, opposition to reproductive cloning has the same grounding as opposition to “therapeutic” or “research” cloning: the usurpation of one human being by another, and human commodification. The bill sponsored by DeGette criminalized the implantation and gestation of a cloned human, but it certainly did not ban human cloning. All cloned embryos would be used or else, discarded, for no one desires to be fined $10 million. Voting FOR the use of humans as laboratory material is that which defies logic; voting against it signals that perhaps there beat some human hearts in the House of Representatives.

Reference: House Defeats Bill to Ban Human Cloning