Amendment 2 Would Permit Later-Stage Embryo Farming

I received an e-mail from a reader of Secondhand Smoke, gently chastising me for assuming that the amendment would not permit reproductive cloning. Her actual fear is that A. 2 would permit fetal farming, as the New Jersey law does. As we shall see, she was wrong about the fetal farming, but right that the principle would allow gestation of cloned embryos beyond the time it could be maintained in a Petri dish:

I rechecked the language, and here is the pertinent section:

“‘Clone or attempt to clone a human being’ means to implant in a uterus or attempt to implant in a uterus anything other than the product of fertilization of an egg of a human female by a sperm of a human male for the purpose of initiating a pregnancy that could result in the creation of a human fetus, or the birth of a human being.”

This wording would not permit fetal farming, but it would permit later-stage embryo farming since embryology textbooks state clearly that the fetal stage of human development begins at 8 weeks. Before that, the developing human is called an embryo.

This isn’t just pipe smoking, either. Some scientists believe that embryonic germ cells, which come into being at 6 weeks, could be used without tumor foundation. Plus, if an artificial womb comes on line, which is expected within 10 years, that could only maintain the embryo for a month or two, under A. 2., it would be perfectly acceptable to implant a cloned embryo in the artificial environment for study, evaluation, and tissue harvesting. Since the authors of A. 2 could just as easily have refused to permit the cloned embryo to be maintained in any environment beyond 14 days, one must assume that this definition is purposeful and that they foresee conducting such experiments once the technology allows.

Thanks to my correspondent for focusing my attention on this important matter.