Should the U.S. Congress ban all human cloning (“reproductive” and “therapeutic” cloning)?
The distinction between types of cloning activity is driven by the desire of many to create new sources of embryonic stem cells by creating new embryos. What are the arguments for and against both types of cloning? Which do you find persuasive and why? Note: the President’s Commission on Bioethics has weighed in on this topic with its first report. • Federal funding for stem cell research. President Bush’s policy, announced August 2001 and fleshed out by the NIH since that time, superseded an earlier funding policy put out by Pres. Clinton’s NIH chief, Dr. Harold Varmus. There are a couple of ways (at least) to proceed on this topic, e.g.: Which funding policy got it right (if either did)? On the merits, how did Bush do? Is this a funding policy that is doomed? Internally inconsistent? Based upon unsustainable premises or distinctions? Or is it a principled compromise that will stand the test of time? • Ethics of third-world drug research. Drug companies have been accused of running dr
