Thursday, February 12, 2004

A Brave New World

Scientists in South Korea announced that they have cloned human embyos and harvested stem cells from them :
Scientists from Seoul National University report they succeeded thanks, they say, to using extremely fresh eggs donated by South Korean volunteers and finding a gentler way of handling the genetic material inside them.

But, the scientists say, this cloning is "not to make babies". Rather, "it's called therapeutic cloning, in which embryos that are the genetic twins of a particular patient are grown in a test-tube to supply master stem cells..."

Yeah, it's sure "therapeutic" for the human beings that are created and then destroyed to get that "genetic material."

The day has arrived where we try to create human beings and destroy them, in order to supply "spare parts."

But the technique still doesn't work very well:
The Seoul team collected 242 eggs, from which they succeeded in cloning 30 blastocysts early-stage embryos containing a mere 100 cells. From those, they harvested just one colony of stem cells.
So 30 human beings were created in petri dishes and then destroyed. Strip away the lab coats and the shiny bright machines, and you've got mass murder. Laurie Zoloth, a professor of medicine, said "The kind of cloning to make human babies is impermissible. Clearly, the (South Korean researchers') intent is to do therapy."

Yeah, we can't have actual babies brought into the world. But manufacturing them in order to kill them is fine and dandy.

But not to worry: they're still "years away" from making this technology usuable. They'll just have to manufacture a few thousand more human beings and kill them in order to perfect their technique.

You shall be as gods... (Genesis 3:5)