Chimeras and Clones Roam Free

Interesting op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle by Osagie Obasogie (neat name too) of the Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland, California. He calls for regulations regarding chimeras, which President Bush surprisingly mentioned in his state of the union address.

The president's statement was the following:

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator – and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale. (Applause.)

Obasogie says:

Bush's remarks may very well have been prompted by a recent article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which reported that researchers at the Salk Institute in La Jolla had created the first set of fully functioning human nerve cells in an animal by injecting human embryonic stem cells into mouse embryos. These mice now experience the world, at least in part, with cells similar to those you are now using to read this article.

Since the president doesn't even read the newspaper, I kind of doubt he reads PNAS, but maybe someone at the White House does. In any case, I don't know exactly why Obasogie chose chimeras as the technology most worthy of regulation. Equally important is the fact that the United States has no regulations concerning human cloning (besides the FDA's somewhat flimsy claim of jurisdiction over the practice). Until Congress can draft a bill separating therapeutic cloning (strictly for research, an embryo would never be implanted into a uterus) from reproductive cloning (resulting in a baby), the U.S. will likely remain without federal cloning legislation. Some states have adopted cloning legislation.