Fetal Farming On The Way-Necessary For Embryonic Stem Cell Therapies

FETAL FARMING is almost sure to follow on the heels of the announcement that Harvard and UCSF are about to start cloning human embryos for research.   Unless the Senate acts, it will REMAIN LEGAL to do so.

Cloning advocates swear that they ONLY want to allow the clones to live 10-14 days in a Petri dish.  That is wrong in it self, but these are the SAME PEOPLE who said they just wanted to use "leftover" embryos in fertility labs and would NEVER EVER want to clone.  That was soon abandoned for wanting to use more and more embryos (H.R. 810, S. 471) and now to clone them (S 1520). 

The next step is to implant the clones and allow their embryonic stem cells to "mature'  until they are more useable.  Unless the Senate acts-with Harry Reid getting out of the way-fetal farming is right around the corner. Here's why:

Young embryonic stem cells don't seem to have what it takes to do what researchers want-replace or repair diseased/degenerating tissues.  These embryonic stem cells are programmed to rapidly construct a human body from one single celled zygote to a 5-10 pound baby boy or girl with trillions of cells and all the complicated systems needed to sustain life outside the womb in just 9 months!  Those cells are rapid producers and seem uncontrollable and as a result cause a high rate of tumors and teratomas in animal studies.   They can’t be used right now with mature tissues like researchers want.  “Maturation” looks to be necessary if embryonic stem cells are to work.

This is probably why MIT stem cell researcher James L. Sherley writes that "Using cloned embryos to investigate the basis of disease in adults and children will often, if indeed not always, require that the embryos undergo maturation. "

Politicians and lobbyists are ready to act on this realization.  The US Catholic Bishops Conference says that new proposals on cloning in various states to legalize implantation and fetal maturation is due to "a growing realization that human cloning will probably not produce usable cells and tissues unless cloned humans can be developed past the embryonic stage."

This is where researchers have wanted to go all the time.  They just couldn't do it all at once.  Growing clones for research and medicine and farming them for their more matured embryonic stem cells is REVOLTING-but not if they can get us there in baby steps and break down incremental barriers of resistance along the way.  They’ve already overcome objections to using already killed embryos-with presidential authority-for research.  The Congress is pushing to allow more killing of embryos (HR 810, S 471) and Harvard & UCSF are going to fund cloning.  Unless some kind of action happens in the Senate to pass the Brownback Landrieu Human Cloning Prohibition Act, researchers will be legally farming human clones in the next several years, if not sooner. The Brave New World of Future Shock is lobbying at our door step.