Media misses human cloning opposition, but reasons abound

The Washington Post headline, "Cloning advance using stem cells from human adult reopens ethical questions," suggested investigative insight into the controversy. Yet somehow the Post failed to find a single opponent of human cloning to quote, only quoting the researchers who stand to profit from the embryo-destroying human cloning experiments.

That's odd, since Gallup polling reveals that fully 83 percent of Americans oppose human cloning, which means the reporter literally could have stepped outside the Post enclave and found myriad opponents on the street to interview.

Opponents include scores of ethically concerned citizens besides "religious groups" as the article suggests. Some of the 83 percent of Americans who oppose human cloning reject it because no human being should be created simply for the use of someone else. Advocates on both left and right oppose human cloning because it would require huge numbers of eggs taken from exploited women through dangerous procedures. My colleague Jennifer Lahl has documented these dangers in the film, Eggsploitation.

Others realize that no researcher's promise and no federal law could ever stop rogue scientists in the US or anywhere in the world from bringing a cloned human embryo to birth. That would risk horrific abnormalities and incur unspeakable psychological harm on the cloned baby created not as an original, but as a copy, not out of a mother and father's love, but out of scientific experimentation.

Several decades of highly paid researchers' hype about embryo-destructive research have produced none of the promised cures, all the while siphoning precious funds from proven effective adult stem cell research and other non-controversial stem cell methods. Instead of parroting the hype of invested researchers, offer readers a critical, even-handed look at this controversy that threatens to undermine the core ethical safeguards of our humanity.