[extropy-chat] Proposed bill to ban cloning stirs debate about human life

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

Note how Wesley Smith adopts an irrational position, not "entirely
secular" as he says but entirely taliban.
Of course if the last sentence were to be made logically correct, it
should be modified as: "Does human life have intrinsic moral value
simply and merely because it is human? … If the answer to this crucial
question is yes, which I believe it must be, then we will do whatever
is needed to save human lives".
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Columbia Daily Tribune - Is an embryo of 150 cells human? When does
life begin? Does an embryo have a soul?
Those questions and others were up for discussion last night as
lawmakers held their first hearing of the year on a bill that would
ban human cloning. The issue has zoomed into the public consciousness
in recent months, and last night senators heard dueling testimonies
from three scientists and an activist.
The bill "would sacrifice a patient's hope for a cure because of a
religious belief - a belief that other people of faith do not hold - a
belief that the patient's own cells in a laboratory dish are more
important than that patient's life."
On the other side was Wesley Smith, a California attorney who has
written extensively about bioethics issues and said that he approaches
the issue from an "entirely secular" perspective.
Smith argued that "cloning is cloning is cloning" and said that even
therapeutic cloning is immoral because "it reduces nascent human life
to the status of a mere commodity, a natural resource ripe for the
harvest."
Smith said many scientists have become "hyper-politicized" in their
support of nuclear transfer and that cloning issues shouldn't be left
to the scientific community to decide.
"Does human life have intrinsic moral value simply and merely because
it is human? … If the answer to this crucial question is yes, which I
believe it must be, then we will outlaw all human cloning," Smith
said.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Feb/20050201News005.asp