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Bill: Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224
Details
Submitted by[?]: Growth and Prosperity Party
Status[?]: defeated
Votes: This is an ordinary bill. It requires more yes votes than no votes. This bill will not pass any sooner than the deadline.
Voting deadline: November 2226
Description[?]:
| Currently, all research into human cloning is illegal. By allowing strictly regulated research in human cloning, this bill aims to aid research in therapeutic cloning (cloning of organs, for example) while maintaining the strict ban on cloning of human beings. Advancements in therapeutic cloning coupled with stem cell research would allow for treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's disease where immune rejection is a significant problem. It would also increase the likelihood of organ cloning, which would aid those who die while waiting for an organ donor. (ooc) There are 90,000 people on an organ donor list in the US alone, and many of these people will die as a result of not being able to find a suitable organ donor. I have witnessed the problems of organ shortfall firsthand (via a close friend) and feel quite strongly about the suffering that goes on due to restrictions on therapeutic cloning. There will never be "enough" organs out there, and organ rejection will always remain a problem until patients can receive organs that are tailored to their DNA. |
Proposals
Article 1
Proposal[?] to change Government policy towards the cloning of human beings.
Old value:: The cloning of human beings is illegal.
Current: Research in cloning technologies is not regulated.
Proposed: Research in cloning technologies is legal, but regulated.
Debate
These messages have been posted to debate on this bill:
| Date | 18:19:46, May 08, 2006 CET | From |  Jelbék Zemojad Lofrkad Prta | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | We are thus far in support, although our researchers are thoroughly, err, researching this from all angles. ooc: Bit difficult, this one :-) |
| Date | 19:14:27, May 08, 2006 CET | From | Green Manalishi Party | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | Have to say we were considering putting this one up ourselves. We lean towards supporting it, but like the DLP, not 100% certain yet. We are also in the process of putting forward a bill that is inherently linked to this. |
| Date | 04:00:44, May 09, 2006 CET | From | Free Conservative Party | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | "Current: The cloning of human beings is illegal." The way it is written, I believe it means animal cloning and research is legal. If you were a human clone, how would you like living knowing that you were a science experiment? |
| Date | 15:46:33, May 09, 2006 CET | From | Centre Démocratique | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | The Citizens Party put this law into effect decades ago. I am under the impression that this law makes it illegal to clone ENTIRE human beings, but allows for things like stem-cell research. Am I wrong to assume this? |
| Date | 17:54:14, May 09, 2006 CET | From | Green Manalishi Party | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | FCP - That would be like doing the same things to IVF babies; a technique that has been used for almost 30 years. CP - We hadn't previously considered that interpretation but agree that it is valid. This debate could be coming down to semantics. |
| Date | 17:43:59, May 10, 2006 CET | From | Growth and Prosperity Party | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | The GPP is pretty sure that the GMP and CP's interpretations are incorrect because of the following reasons: There are only three options for cloning: 1) Research in cloning technologies is unregulated 2) The cloning of human beings is illegal 3) Research in cloning technologies is legal, but unregulated Considering that the options almost always represent the full spectrum of decision-making in this game, one would imagine that 2 would restrict not only the act of cloning, but the research as well. Before anyone mentions anything, the GPP would also like to point out that the differences between different species' somatic cells means that you can't "substitute" research in human cloning with that in monkeys for example. The scientific reason that one can't ban completely ban human cloning research (assuming option 2 does) while alloing for "things like stem-cell research" as the CP suggested is that the initial step of cloning the embryo is identical regardless of purpose. (you can verify this on wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cloning) Both human-cloning and therapeutic cloning rely on the SAME technologies for creating clones, namely somatic cell transfer. This is when you take the DNA of the original and insert it into a somatic cell (ova). Under the current statute it is almost certain that this is banned, since "cloning research" for either purpose is identical. The differences arise from what is done with the embryo AFTERWARDS, namely after the cloning has already taken place. In human-cloning, the cloned embryo is inserted into the uterus and becomes a human (if everything else works out as well) In therapeutic cloning, this embryo is allowed to mature to the blastocyst stage (~100 cells) in a petri dish, encouraged to become stem cells through "voodoo" (this esearch is ONLY useful for therapeutic cloning), and finally used to "grow" into new organs inside the patient's body (this is also research ONLY relevant to therapeutic cloning). Hope this clarifies this a bit, because considering the science it's pretty unlikely that this is a semantics issue. |
| Date | 18:21:24, May 10, 2006 CET | From | Green Manalishi Party | To | Debating the Therapeutic Cloning Act 2224 |
| Message | We accept that logic on the decision-making process in the game. At present we are in favour of the proposal. |
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Voting
| Vote | Seats | ||||
| yes |
Total Seats: 236 | ||||
| no |
Total Seats: 271 | ||||
| abstain |
Total Seats: 118 |
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