Japan's Clones to kick America back to the Stoneage

[Taro Toporific]

Panel to recommend Japan lift ban on cloning human embryos
June 23 / TOKYO (AP) -A government panel on Wednesday said it will recommend that Japan permit the limited cloning of human embryos for scientific research...Britain and South Korea allow therapeutic cloning, but the United States prohibits any kind of embryo cloning and has lobbied strongly against it.

pix byjuergenspecht.com

[emperor]

...Britain and South Korea allow therapeutic cloning..

... haha .. therapy...


..i think im gonna need therapy after coming home from Japan..

[Big Booger]

And they say the US actively pursues the separation of church and state....


The reason cloning is not allowed in the US is basically a religious one.... Ol' Georgie worships to Jesus and it says clearly on that stone tablet good ol' Moses tapped out, 10.5 Commandment: Thou shalt not clone.

[cstaylor]

And they say the US actively pursues the separation of church and state....

Well, that's the difference between the early American statesmen like Madison and the grammatically impared sitting President.

[Taro Toporific]

The reason cloning is not allowed in the US is basically a religious one....

Mo' interesting is that the reason cloning will be allowed in Japan is basically a religious one. That is, traditionally Japanese view embryos, fetuses, AND infants as "mizu-ko" water children.

Japan where Buddhism is one of the major religions, abortion rates are very high since abortion is frequently used as a method for birth control. The Japanese Buddhists have special prayers for the aborted fetuses known as mizuko kuyo and believe that the aborted fetuses have been the victims of a poor karmic cycle. Abortion, while not sanctioned by the Japanese Buddhists, is still a normal practice in that society. Just as reproductive controls such as abortion have become tacitly accepted, there is a possibility that stem cell research and cloning may ultimately attain a similar status.

DISCLAIMER: As a braindeadgimp I have a vested personal interest in clone and stem cell research and I view the attempts to limit it as a personal assault on my life.

[plaid_knight]

..I think I'm gonna need therapy after coming home from Japan..

I needed some. 2 years of working my arse off for N*VA made me depressed as all heck.

[Unspoken]

Cloning, stem-cell research, etc. are inevitable, and the US is just shooting itself in the foot by refusing to join the race.

The tremendous benefits such research could weild might prove to be just as important as the invention of soap or penicillin. It's unlikely that any such findings will come from the states, though, because many brilliant men and women in the good ol' US of A are getting their hands slapped at every turn instead of receiving funding for such projects.

Separation of church and state my ass.

If other countries jump ahead of the U.S. in stem cell therapeutics--and several have declared that intention--then both the biotechnology industry and patients will suffer. American companies might lose billions in revenue. Our government will have to decide whether to approve stem cell treatments developed overseas and also whether to allow Medicaid and Medicare to pay for them. Denying lifesaving treatments to the poor and elderly would be neither ethical nor politically popular. Yet approving the treatments would be morally inconsistent: the U.S. would be saying that it is wrong to conduct the research but fine to benefit from it.

Looks like a lose/lose situation, doesn't it?

Byt the way, the quote came from this article over at ScientificAmerican.com.

The site has quite a few interesting papers on stem-cell research, among many other things, and I'd highly recommend at least a quick see-through of these two as well:

Politics: The Biggest Obstacle of All

The Stem Cell Challenge