Crabby Young Man:Cells support cloning ban

Hi! I’m a group of cells in a petrie dish! I and others like me are not known for being outspoken, but since Congress banned human cloning last week, I felt the time was right to give my thanks.

My scientist friends who created me plopped me in front of a TV so I could watch the Congressional debates on the subject, and I was highly entertained. You see, I never thought anyone cared that much. What a boost to my ego to see that the government is arguing about little me. Look at me! Without a microscope, I’m invisible! And here is Congress, arguing about whether I constitute life! The cows those Congresspeople eat for lunch demonstrate more life than I do. At least the cow can breathe and walk around and think. I can’t do any of those things.

But I’m worth fighting over. Leave it to a conservative Congress to bring me to the forefront.

I’ll be honest, I was scared. I worried about being exploited for medical research. But to my rescue came the legislation. ‘Therapeutic cloning hasn’t produced any disease cures yet!’ cried the cloning detractors.

I’m in agreement. Science isn’t about research and experimentation. Science is about results. How wonderful to have a government that finally understands that! In the early 1960s, when John F. Kennedy proposed that man would walk on the moon in 10 years, everyone thought he was crazy. Science had not, to that point, produced a spacecraft even remotely capable of achieving the feats that Kennedy was talking about.

If today’s Congress had been present at Kennedy’s speech, their response would likely have been, ‘But we’ve got capsules that orbit the Earth. We can shoot monkeys into space! We don’t really need to go any further. Let’s see if there’s a war we can fight somewhere, and pour our money into that.’

To hear my scientist parents talk about this human cloning bill, though, you would think someone had died. They kept yelling and getting between my petri dish and the TV.

Now, many advocates of therapeutic cloning want to use me for research. They point out that I could help cure or treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes. Why place more emphasis on a couple of cells than on the life of an Alzheimer’s patient? Well, I know why. That patient has done bad things! The Christians in Congress know this. Patients are all sinners and don’t deserve to heal! My fellow cells and I, on the other hand, have done no wrong. We mean no harm to anyone. We only wish to divide in peace.

Of course, if more people understood what therapeutic cloning is, I would be in trouble. It’s very different from reproductive cloning, which aims to create a child. I am not actually formed from human sperm and egg cells. In the therapeutic cloning process, I divide for a while and produce stem cells, which can adapt to many different parts of the body. I will never become a child, or even a fully formed fetus. In vitro fertilization is more destructive to fetuses than therapeutic cloning, but no one is trying to ban that.

Many Congresspeople spun horror stories of cloned babies being created and used for spare parts. One particularly ignorant Republican even compared the process to finding spare car parts in a junkyard! I know this would never happen, but I won’t say anything. The design of therapeutic cloning is not to create babies that goo and cuddle with people. Therapeutic cloning creates a group of cells like me. Then I’ll turn into a group of stem cells, which are markedly un-babylike. As long as people are afraid of all cloning, I’m safe. I don’t want to be a stem cell! I like being the way I am.

Frankly, I’m pretty happy here. I don’t want to turn into a full-grown baby, even if I could. I’m now better protected by the government than I would be if I was born. At least now, I can’t starved, be executed or sent to war!

We shouldn’t stop here. Why not halt all medical research? It’s a big waste of money and time. Look at the millions of dollars needlessly spent on AIDS research. We have a treatment for AIDS, right? That’s good enough. Why spend all that money on a cure, when we can treat the disease? The doctors can redirect their energy toward finding a treatment for exposure to chemical and biological weapons. We’ll all need that pretty soon.

You’re all so worried about me, and I find the whole thing damned flattering! It’s nice to get some recognition. Not to editorialize, but those people with debilitating diseases need to stop whining so much. Why don’t they follow the example of our government and try a little prayer? Now that they’re not destroying cells like me, I’m sure God would be more than willing to cure any unpleasant diseases they might have. Good luck. I’ll be sitting in my petri dish, watching CNN. It’s just a shame that I can’t vote.