Enough Scaremongering, Already!

UK scientists, who want to make human/animal hybrid cloned embryos for use in stem cell research, are warning that unless they are permitted to proceed as they desire, hundreds of thousands of patients may die. Enough already. We’ve heard it before. Such arguments are just part of the great hype game, and quite frankly, the scaremongering is getting old.

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. How would promoters of ESCR and cloning like it if their opponents argued that pouring money into those technologies will cause hundreds of thousands of people to die because it will divert resources away from adult stem cell research, which is moving forward nicely in the here and now, and direct it toward biotechnologies that may not be perfected for decades? They wouldn’t like it one bit. In fact, they would deeply resent the charge that implementing their principled ethical views would be akin to killing.

I do hope that the UK authorities do say no to human/animal hybrid cloning, as these scientists fear. It is high time that society lets it be known that we will not accept “anything goes.”