Comments on Keep Your Laws Off My Body. I'm Pro-Cloning.

"But the articles don’t even mention how the scientists actually made those controversial embryos. They made them by cloning."

Huh. Clips from the NYT article you linked to above:

"The new method sidesteps other ethical quandaries, creating stem cells that genetically match the donor without having to resort to cloning or the requisite donation of women’s eggs."

"Until now, the only way most scientists thought such patient-specific stem cells could be made would be to create embryos that were clones of that person and extract their stem cells."

"But with the new method, human cloning for stem cell research, like the creation of human embryos to extract stem cells, may be unnecessary."

"Ever since the birth of Dolly the sheep in 1996, scientists knew that adult cells could, in theory, turn into embryonic stem cells. But they had no idea how to do it without cloning, the way Dolly was created."

"With cloning, researchers put an adult cell’s chromosomes into an unfertilized egg whose genetic material was removed."

The Washington Post article is more frugal, yet it also mentions cloning once as part of the process to create embryos for stem cells.

This, along with the bogus complaint that AFP didn't use the word "holocaust" in an article you posted a while back (they did - conveniently, you put ellipses in the part of the article you quoted where the word was used), I think creates a trend.

I don't get why people are so uptight about cloning yet refuse to take even the most simple step of offing at least one member of every set of twins.

Gotta love how George takes credit for the whole thing:

The White House said that Mr. Bush was “very pleased” about the new findings, adding that “By avoiding techniques that destroy life, while vigorously supporting alternative approaches, President Bush is encouraging scientific advancement within ethical boundaries.”

Cloning technology will still be pursued for livestock, where one needs to make whole critters (all with the same set of desirable traits), not just a body part here and there. And the new findings with the reprogrammed stem cells will probably make cloning easier, since the reprogramming step was the big hurdle, not the nuclear transplantation itself.

OK.

The donor egg cells were not technically cloned, but it did involve using egg cells without DNA, other than mitochondrial DNA (which comes from your mom ... always).

So, while not cloning per se, there was an egg involved, but it wasn't fertilized, it had the nucleus REPLACED. Using fusion.

So, depends on if you're a religious freak who thinks life starts at conception (then it's not a conception) or a scientist who thinks this whole religious objection to stem cells is just plain silly.

@2 - actually, a very very large fraction of twins either self-terminate one of the twins or it is absorbed. You have, inside your body, stem cells from all the children your mom ever had.