Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Mephisto
I thought it had. No destruction or cloning of human life.
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That's close to Bush's official position, but actually there is nothing illegal about this research. The official U.S. policy is that any research that requires the destruction of human embryos is not supported by federal funds. But Bush has done a little two-step around this rule: he says that if the embryo was "previously destroyed" then the government can fund research on that embryo. If the embryo is not previously destroyed, then it's off limits for federal funding if research kills it.
So that begs the question: if you have a cloned embryo, what to do with it? It's not destroyed, so you can't use it for stem cells because that would kill it (according to Bush). The only alternative then would be to implant it, but then you'd have a cloned baby.
As I said, these embryos (blastocysts) are just going to get easier and easier to create.