|
Because genetic science is advancing at such a
breakneck speed, legislation governing it has been
hard pressed to keep up. Not only is it difficult
to keep pace, but these important issues are also
very controversial and take time to wade through.
Within 48 hours of the announcement of Dolly, the
cloned lamb, President Clinton launched a ninety
day investigation into the aspects and possibilities
of cloning in the United States. At the end of those
ninety days (May 1997) he announced that human clones
should not be born in the United States, at least
for the next five years. But he did say that cloning
experiments could continue (so long as the clones
weren’t born) without government aid.
In Great Britain, clones are allowed to be made
and born. As you are reading this, more experiments
are being conducted. Cloning does require a license,
however, and the scientists must follow strict guidelines.
The frightening thing is that more than 170 nations
have no laws against, or even legislation about,
genetics. That means that anyone in these countries
can do whatever they please with genes, even unethical
things.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution protects
the rights of all humans (it was originally written,
after the Civil War, to protect blacks as well as
whites) in the United States. Now, because of modern
cloning techniques, we must ask ourselves: When
is a human a human? Many animals can be made--and
exist--with human DNA in their cells. Does this
mean that they, too, are protected by the Constitution?
Questions like these are very important and take
time to answer.
Scientists and companies are also able to hold
patents (protection rights against copying or reproducing)
on all sorts of genetic material including specific
genes, DNA sequences, clones, and so on. This often
leads to competition among companies involved with
genetic research.
|
