First human cloning license granted in the UK

Very good news: BBC NEWS | Health | Scientists given cloning go-ahead

I can't wait until this hits America. My unholy clone army is so near to becoming a reality...

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"Archeologists near mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is currently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine, it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read, 'To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitous, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.' The page has been universally condemned by church leaders."
-Rob Grant and Doug Naylor

May I remind you that Bush ain't out of the oval office yet. I have been becoming more and more pessimistic lately. Despite Bush's fruitcakeness, people are still supporting him. As long as he is there, America's advancement in biotech will be held back and we will be breathing in from other countries' exhaust pipes.

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The Laminator
For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

Am I just stupid (probably) or isn't it actually not humans being cloned according to the link??

It's not reproductive cloning, but it is human embryos that are being cloned (or will be, more accurately).

You are not stupid at all...I read the thread topic and thought it was a joke. I seriously doubt the UK would allow reproductive cloning since given the level of cloning technology, this would be insanely unethical. On the other hand, experiments in therapeutic cloning (which does require embryos) are allowed...and one can probably hear the wave of researchers flooding out of the US where the current administration has restricted this research based on religious grounds to the UK where common sense and a desire to derive medically beneficial treatment prevailed over lobbyism.

This argument presupposes that America's advancement in biotech is exclusively dependent on Federally funded research involving embryonic stem cells and/or cloning.I request you substantiate this presupposition.Otherwise, it's a non-sequitur, and an argument from adverse consequences, which, as you know, is logically fallacious.

I did not say that at all, especially the word "exclusively". There are many other research out there that have the potential for great breakthroughs.What I was saying is that federally funded research involving embryonic stem cells have a great potential to be one of our greatest scientific achievemnents. They got some private fundings for the research but the amount they got was a fraction of what they could have gotten from federal funding.I know, I know. That's what they said about gene therapy in the 80's and we still haven't seen much improvement. Still, it wouldn't hurt to keep trying.

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The Laminator
For goodness's sake, please vote Democrat this November!

I sense some parallels between some of the claims currently being made for embryonic stem cells, and claims made about nuclear energy in the 1940's and 1950's. Claims that, in the long run, turned out to be unfounded hubris. "Power too cheap to meter", and weapons proliferation, reactor design reliability, waste disposal concerns brushed aside as the illegitimate complaints of obscurantist Luddites.Both areas generate ethical concerns that ought not be cavalierly dismissed. But from a strictly scientific standpoint it is not unreasonable to ask some questions before proceeding as well.Let's just be careful out there...