Cloning commoditizes human life. In research cloning, it creates human life for the purpose of destroying and harvesting it like a corn crop. In reproductive cloning—the same process but a different use of the human life created by SCNT—a baby is born that has been “made to order.”
Anti cloning advocates have also warned that since each cloning attempt requires a human egg, that “asexual reproduction” will result in the instrumentalization of women for their eggs. To prevent that, a coalition of pro life feminists and pro choice feminists started Keep Your Hands Off Our Ovaries to fight against treating women as so many egg purveyors—particularly since egg procurement can cause physical harm to women, and in a few cases, even kill them.
And now it is starting. The LA Times is reporting that would-be human cloners are frustrated by an egg dearth and want to purchase eggs since they are having a tough time getting a sufficient supply to permit their cloning research to go ahead full bore. (Our friend Dr. Lanza is quoted. I guess lying to the press about research successes doesn’t disqualify one to be a source.)
Happily, the law generally stops egg purchasing for research purposes—for now—as do many voluntary protocols. Part of this is, ironically, apparently due to Proposition 71, which bars egg purchasing and sets the ethical standard for the world since everyone wants to have access to all that money we Californians are going to borrow to pay them to do human cloning. And now, despite the risks to women, the scientists want to garner thousands of eggs through purchase and sale. But they should think about that very carefully: If one woman dies from such a transaction, and two UK women have died recently having eggs procured, the cloning enterprise will suffer a profound blow.
This article didn’t just appear by accident. The reporter was almost surely approached by someone in (or who represents) the biotech sector with the story idea, and she ran with it. Mark my words, the Times article is the opening salvo in Big Biotech’s next move: Doing away with the ban on egg sales for medical research. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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