Banned Research and Raids on "Secret Labs"

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote:

>Despite warnings from scientists who say such practices are fraught with
>potential health risks, some Raelians have built a secret U.S. laboratory
>and vowed to create the first human clone this year.

It would be fairly interesting to hear what those health risks are. If they
refer to risks to the people doing the experiments, I can't see any beyond
what normal parenting would bring. If they instead refer to the babies being
born/built, then we're seeing one serious extension of the concept of
"unborn babies". The GE scare has religious morality, ignorance and fear of
the unknown written all over it.

>Food and Drug Administration agents visited the lab recently and ordered
>any human cloning experiments to cease.

Makes one wonder whether babies are Food or Drug. Just as one has a hard
time telling which one religious sects are, Alcohol, Tobacco or Firearms.

>Oooh, scary! A "secret lab"! What, all labs are supposed to be public,
>registering with the government? (There is no evidence the lab is using
>more dangerous chemicals than are normally found in any hardware store,
>for example, so "public safety" cannot be a justification.)

But see, once they've done with cloning, they'll crave for more. Soon
they'll be doing gene splicing and whatnot. Then we'll have a swarm of newly
born \bermenschen running around, wreaking havoc. The final days are coming,
there will be Judgment...

>Is there no consideration of common sense, or are prosecutors just
>flunkouts in science who can't separate speech acts from actual violations
>of the law?

Actually I think the law prohibits research targeted at cloning in addition
to cloning itself. All the same, it's bad law.

>The issue of whether human cloning research is so intrinsically sensitive
>or dangerous that it requires preemptive raids and fishing expeditions is
>a topic worth discussing.

The hysteria surrounding gene manipulation is weird all over. I've never
even seen proper assessments of threats beyond the problems created by large
monocultures of genetically engineered plant species, the effects on third
world economies of patented crops and allergic reactions to unexpected
foreign proteines in foodstuffs. This is hardly the sort of stuff to cause
one to reach for the gun, and could be dealt with on the market. The only
real threat I can see in cloning humans is the risk of fucking the baby up
for good, and somehow it is quite difficult to see a) how that would happen
if you're just doing a competent clone job and b) how one justifies
preemption of the research since the mistakes have yet to be made.

><<For months, Boisselier has told reporters that she has three scientists
>and a physician trying to resurrect an 11-month-old infant-the deceased
>son of a former state legislator, whom the Raelians refuse to
>identify-through genetic regeneration.>>

"Resurrect"? That is one serious piece of loaded lingo -- the next thing
they'll be doing now is slipping in spiritual advice.

><< Even if a law were passed in the United States, it could prove
>difficult to enforce because cloning operations are easy to hide.

It seems that they're making scientists into the bad guys. Science flunkouts
indeed, having a fit of envy. They really should understand that in a free
country, researchers have no reason to explicitly hide their operations, or
to sneak around cloning babies. "Are you, or have you ever been, a
Biologist?"

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front