(Answers from "A Rose and A Prayer")
Senate Bill 5 says it bans cloning. It does not. It bans one kind of cloning and makes another kind legal. It bans some forms of reproductive cloning, cloning to make a baby. It gives legal protection to scientists who want to create clones to be destroyed in scientific experiments. This kind of cloning, “cloning to kill,” is even more unethical than reproductive cloning.
2. Senate Bill 5 says it regulates human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research. It does not. It regulates only research funded by state dollars. Sponsors also said last year that they would not propose funding from state dollars to be used for stem hESC research. If that is true, the bill is toothless on hESC research.
3. Sponsors of Senate Bill 5 say that stem cell research and cloning are already legal in Delaware and that SB 5 is necessary to regulate them. In fact, no one in Delaware is doing hESC or cloning research, because scientists fear that, in the absence of a bill authorizing these activities, that they could be prosecuted. SB 5 exists only to authorize such research.
4. Senate Bill 5 says it supports adult stem cell research. This is a smokescreen. Adult stem cell research is ethical and legal and does not need a bill to make it so. Adult stem cell research is going on in Delaware right now. There are over 70 treatments from adult stem cells.
5. Senate Bill 5 says it makes the sale of embryos illegal. While it does make the sale of embryos illegal, it does not make the sale of the products of human embryos illegal. Stem cell lines are sold for up to $5,000 each. Each human embryo that is destroyed can produce up to 200 lines. There is big money in human embryonic stem cell research.
6. Senate Bill 5 does nothing to stop the exploitation of poor women for their eggs, which will be needed for any cloning research. Huang, the discredited scientist from Korea who claimed to have cloned a human last year, went through thousands of human eggs, which were obtained by forcing graduate students to hyperovulate, a painful and medically dangerous process.
