From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Nov 26 2001 - 00:56:06 MST
New Scientist has a nice article on the how the U.K.
is scrambling to correct its human cloning debacle
and in the process finding out how much of a swamp
they have waded into...
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991602
You can hear the screams about the proposed fixes...
"It won't stop human cloned embryos being placed in animals"
- Bruno Quintavale of the Pro-Life Alliance
Precisely...
Note:
> The alliance wanted the new law to ban creation of any
> cloned human embryo, even for therapeutic cloning. "If
> you allow creation of cloned embryos, it makes it almost
> inevitable someone will implant them," says Quintavalle.
Ah, well, so thats a good reason to prevent the research
that might save billions of lives...
I got a chuckle out of their site:
See: http://www.prolife.org.uk/about/legal.htm
Esp: "Life, Not Death - Vote ProLife Alliance"
and: "Equality of all: absolute respect for innocent human life"
Lord, I'm not innocent? Gee I hope my mother doesn't find out.
Now, the *really* interesting part of this would appear to
be the fact that the ProLife Alliance seems to have played
a critical role in bringing down the government position
that "cloning" is banned in England. Why? Because they
want to open up parlimentary debate banning all forms
of cloning...
Their most recent press release:
> The ProLife Alliance is horrified at the news that Mike West of ACT
> has created a human clone for embryonic stem cell experimentation.
> "Scientists are clearly no longer guided by ethical restraints,"
> said a spokesperson from the ProLife Alliance. "They can no longer
> be trusted with the future of mankind. We urgently need national
> and international laws which ban all forms of human cloning and
> genetic manipulation.
Now, I'm just "supposing" but it would appear that this
is a few-person operation (with some very clever marketing).
If you folks in the Europe want to point out some of the
flaws in the reasoning, e.g. "Don't I too have a right to
life if stem cells can provide that?".
*PLAY* nice, we want to show our best side:
Bruno Quintavalle 0044 351 9955 mob: 07968 167 323
I'd recommend people make up a short list of "points" that
they would like to make. If you call, you might want to start
by congratulating Bruno for his contribution in eliminating
that British Ban on cloning. Then you should launch into
"query" mode asking if he has time to explain the Alliance's
position against cloning (always allow your opponent to "buy in").
It is probably useful to allow them to dig their own hole -- you should
express your opinions calmly and clearly and listen to any responses
(you can feed them back to the list for further analysis).
What we ultimately want to do is tie them up in the irrationality
of their position creating a fair amount of cognitive dissonance.
IMO, it is unlikely that people like this will change their
positions. But enough people telling one that you need to
reconsider your position will significantly slow down many
people. The rest, are unfortunately, hopeless.
The fundamental question is why do they value "innocent" life
with a low information content above "lived" life with a high
information content? A baby cannot teach a child how to safely
walk across a street -- an adult can!
Robert
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