RON REAGAN’S CLONING AGENDA, AND ITS TWO BIG LIES

To the credit of Ron Reagan, while he has hi-jacked his father’s good name in the pursuit of unethical science, and done so with sophisticated dishonesty, he has finally let the cat out of the bag. Rather than waste his time and ours by asking for a few stem-cell lines more, or even a freezer full of “spare” embryos, he has gone to the heart of the issue. He’s a cloner. What we need, he says, is mass-production cloning of human embryos. By the million. Of course, he doesn’t use the word “cloning.” It’s not a popular word, and his candor has its limits. So although it’s a speech on cloning, he never uses the word, not even once. But he describes cloning, advocates cloning, condemns those who oppose cloning.

Like other advocates of “therapeutic cloning” he hypes the hopes of the sick and their families and shamelessly exploits their anguish. To parade the courage and sadness of a 13 year old girl in a speech may not be as tasteless as having sick children testify at hearings (which I have also seen, and which is a new form of child abuse), but it has the effect of short-circuiting any possibility of serious ethical and policy discussion and thereby offers a grave disservice to the cause of democracy. Our first gift to a brave, sick child and her family must be honesty. To suggest that cures for juvenile diabetes and Parkinson’s disease are just around the corner, and that voting in John Kerry will somehow make it happen, is a travesty. And in any case, they have not even made this snakeoil work in animals. Meanwhile, ethical research on adult stem cells has actually cured people with “uncurable” diseases.

Listen to the key paragraph of his speech to the Democratic Party’s convention. If you’ve forgotten how they claim cloning might work (and remember, so far only one human embryo has actually been cloned – in Korea, this spring; and the technique has not even worked in animals), here’s a refresher:

Now, imagine going to a doctor who, instead of prescribing drugs [for Parkinsonism], takes a few skin cells from your arm. The nucleus of one of your cells is placed into a donor egg whose own nucleus has been removed. A bit of chemical or electrical stimulation will encourage your cell's nucleus to begin dividing, creating new cells which will then be placed into a tissue culture. . . . These stem cells are then driven to become the very neural cells that are defective in Parkinson's patients. And finally, those cells -- with your DNA -- are injected into your brain where they will replace the faulty cells whose failure to produce adequate dopamine led to the Parkinson's disease in the first place.

At first glance that looks like as good a summary of the cloning process as you could imagine, with the “therapeutic cloning” hype-hope added. But wait a minute. What’s missing? Only the fact that when “your cell” is placed in the egg what results is a human embryo, as much a human embryo as the embryo that results from natural conception or in vitro fertilization. This is the crucial missing step: an embryo is created, and that embryo is then destroyed – “disaggregated” is one technical term used – to harvest the stem cells. So Big Lie #1 in his cloning sales talk is that cloning makes embryos, and extracting the embryo stem cells kills them.

To deny that this makes a “fetus” is of course as ridiculous as denying that it makes a three-year old child. Human fertilization and human cloning make human embryos, the tiny, genetically complete, members of our species that you and I once were.

But side by side with his candid advocacy of this macarbre, unethical science – in which your own embryonic twin is created and destroyed to cure your illness – he sets Big Lie # 2. A huge lie. A necessary lie. A lie that will have been unnoticed by almost all those at the Convention, and almost all those reading reports of what he said. It’s a lie he may even believe himself.

The lie is this: that mass-production embryo cloning is oppose only by pro-life Christians. His argument needs this lie, since it provides him with quite the simplest way to dismiss his opponents. It is so convenient. Listen again:

Now, there are those who would stand in the way of this remarkable future . . . . They argue that interfering with the development of even the earliest stage embryo, even one that will never be implanted in a womb and will never develop into an actual fetus, is tantamount to murder. . . . many are well-meaning and sincere. Their belief is just that, an article of faith, and they are entitled to it.

But it does not follow that the theology of a few should be allowed to forestall the health and well-being of the many.

His meaning is unambiguous. He is asserting that the only opposition to cloning comes from pro-lifers who see it as “murder.” Moreover, he says, they are driven by theological arguments. Yet as those of us who have been following this debate know well, there is opposition to cloning embryos for research purposes from just about every quarter of the culture; and they include the most vigorously pro-choice elements around.

For example, in a letter signed by around 100 pro-choice feminist leaders, a plea was been made for a moratorium on cloning embryos for research. Pro-choice feminists have taken this view for several reasons, one of them being the need for vast numbers of human eggs to be “donated” to make this experimental medicine work.

For example, the pro-choice United Methodist Church is on record as opposing cloning embryos.

For example, the radical environmental group Friends of the Earth is against it too.

For example – and this really is the clincher – in the past four months comprehensive bans on cloning, including for the exact purpose that Ron Reagan wants it, have been made law in both Canada and France. These now join other nations as diverse as Norway , Australia , and Germany , which had already added cloning for any purpose to their criminal code. And in Germany – where it carries a penalty of five years’ imprisonment – they know a thing or two about unethical science.

Of course, the reason that Ron Reagan was able to get away with his “theology of a few” argument is that the American press has almost totally failed to report the facts. These facts. The fact that feminists and environmentalists oppose research cloning. The fact that liberal, pro-choice United Methodists do. The fact that many nations around the world which are not run by pro-lifers, including since the spring two of the largest western nations, have actually made this practice a criminal offense.

It is not exactly a secret, though. Remember the two massive bipartisan votes in favor of a comprehensive cloning ban in the House of Representatives? Remember the floor speech by Bernie Sanders, the House’s one Socialist member? Remember that the Senate bill that seeks a full cloning ban is co-sponsored by pro-choice Democrat Mary Landrieu? These are all matters of record, and they are being willfully ignored by journalists and politicians who are seeking to gerrymander public sentiment into this ghastly science.

So while we thank Ron Reagan for his candor in cutting to the chase and making the pitch for mass-production cloning that lies behind all the “embryo stem cell” discussions, he has also neatly focused the Big Lie that is dominating the American debate through a conspiracy of silence in the press – a conspiracy that gets less forgiveable every day. And he adds his own Big Lie by not calling it cloning and pretending that it does not make and then destroy human embryos.

SIDEBAR

What’s wrong with that?

Me, myself, and I

Ron Reagan seems to think that farming ourselves is so obviously right that it needs no justification. What’s wrong with that?, he asks rhetorically.

Well, the answer is, plenty! One of the few things that has tended to unite pro-choice, pro-life, liberals and conservatives, bioethicists good and bad, is that the body is not a commodity and should not be used to produce them. So it’s illegal to buy and sell body organs in the US and many countries. There is a global trade in transplant organs from developing countries, and it is widely seen as a scandal – since it enables the rich to get organs ahead of the poor who may be more sick; and it offers financial incentives to the poor to sell their organs (kidneys, for example) and hazard their lives. There is a close connection with the principle that human freedom does not extend to the right to sell oneself into slavery, which is of course the final act of self-commodification.

But the debate has now jumped ahead. We are not speaking of selling “spare” kidneys, but creating whole new human beings and using them for research, and – according to the theory – to produce one-on-one medications. Whole human lives will be brought into existence to live and die in a matter of days and to serve the good of others. And, of course, it will not stop with the tiny, early embryo. Ron Reagan made much of the fact that cloning does not initially create a fetus, so no fetus is destroyed. Well, since the word fetus is not generally used for the embryo until 8 weeks into pregnancy that is hardly a surprise. But we need to note this: with the endorsement of BIO (the Biotechnology Industry Organization) the state of New Jersey has passed a law that protects the right to clone a human being all the way through to birth, as long as no live-born child results.

The people-harvesters are here.