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Cloning
Legislation
 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.
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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. |
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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.
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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.
    
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