X-Message-Number: 7818 Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 01:37:23 -0800 From: Loren Hardy <> Subject: FYI:Clinton vs human cloning : Pres ignores self-ownership >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Wed, 05 Mar 1997 04:20:40 GMT >From: Howard Olson <> >To: "bionet.neuroscience mail newsgroup" <> >Subject: Clinton vs human cloning : Pres ignores self-ownership > > > In a blatant display of political oportunism, President Clinton shows >a sudden concern for ethics. He presumes to impose archaic >authoritarian religious views in an attack on the forefront of modern >science and the basis of all human rights : self-ownership. > > Pandering to the worst reactionary authoritarian statist elements of >the Millenium, Clinton seeks a "commission" { an Inquisition is more >like it) to study human cloning. > > Clinton and those he seeks to appease on the statist Left & Right >ignore the simple human fact of self-ownership. If human beings do not >have the right to clone themselves they do not have the right to >reproduce in any form without government consent. The level of >techonology is irrelevant to the simple fact that humans have the >right to dispose of their own tissue in any way they see fit. The >alternative is state-ownership of human beings. This is unconscionable >both ethically and scientifically. > > Basic laws protect the rights of humans from enslavement that >opponents of human cloning pretend to fear in their simplistic >propaganda. In reality, authoritarians of both the right and the left >seek control over human life. Rulers and would-be rulers seek to use >the issue of cloning to establish the principle of state-ownership of >human life. > > Niether scientists nor the public can allow this to happen. We need to >have freedom to experiment so that viruses and all other infectious >agents can be defeated as fast (or hopeully faster) than they can >evolve. Limiting the rights of people to donate their tissue to >medical science for these or any other purposes is to doom humanity to >death from emergent viral and other pathogenic infections. >Biotechnology and medicine in other areas may al;so benefit from human >cloning in ways we cannot even imgaine now. > > But , most importanly, banning human cloning will establish the right >of the State to control human reproduction and human life in toto, by >establishing the precedent created by such a law as Clinton and others >are seeking. > > > Howard R. Olson, MA > Bioethicist > > > > > > > > Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7818