CLONING AND STEM CELLS AGAIN?

That's right, I'm back on my favorite topic. What with: 1) the GOP regaining control of the Senate, making passage of a total ban on cloning more likely; 2) the widely disbelieved announcement that there has indeed been a cloned child born, under the auspices of a group whose scientific credentials and sanity are suspect; 3) Bill Frist, who has been a player (due largely to the fact he is the only M.D. in the Senate and tight with the President) making majority leader; legitimate research pressing forward (notably the announcement that a Stanford lab is making cloned embroys for the purpose of stem cell extraction); and 5) the revelation that the "compromise" the President approved last year, allowing federally funded research to proceed only on then-existing lines of embryonic stem cells, is a crock and, if observed, chokes off the research (far from the 60 lines touted by the White House, turns out there are significantly less than a dozen usable lines in the permitted group), I thought it time to get back on the soapbox.

I've mentioned before Dr. Leon Kass, the influential and to my mind dangerous head of the President's Council on Bioethics. You should read the Council's report, and particularly his contributions as chairman, to see where this fellow is coming from -- somewhere between Jason and Freddy, as far as I can tell. The council website is here.