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Singapore Added to Growing List of Countries Accepting False Distinction in Cloning

'Bans' Only Implantation, Allowing the Child to Live

SINGAPORE, September 2, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Singapore has passed legislation that is being hailed as a 'ban' on cloning. However, cloning of human beings will go ahead provided scientists kill the person created in order to obtain stem cells for research. The junior health minister, Balaji Sadasivan, called the decision 'balanced' between an overly conservative and overly permissive position. Singapore is considered to have some of the world's most lax legislation regarding scientific research, and biotech companies are flocking there to do research that is banned in other countries.

"There is almost unanimous agreement from the international community, local scientific and religious groups as well as our general public that reproductive cloning of human beings is abhorrent," said Sadasivan. However many critics of the practice of cloning have pointed out that there is no ethical difference between 'reproductive' and 'therapeutic' cloning. The acceptance of the distinction is in conjunction with other very permissive legislation that effectively creates a requirement to kill. The new legislation in Singapore will allow free use of stem cells from any source, whether aborted children, abandoned embryonic human beings in IVF facilities, or those created specifically for the purpose either in vitro or by cloning. The legislation prohibits only the practice of implantation of a manufactured clone into a woman or animal.

Tellingly, the Reuters coverage used the headline, "Singapore Bans Human Cloning, Stem Cell Research OK." Media have led the way in the use of linguistic deceptions.

Legislation of this kind is being enacted all over the world and each claims to prohibit the 'abhorrent' practice of 'reproductive cloning'. In April 3, 2003, New York State presented a bill effectively identical to that just passed in Singapore. At the time, Richard E. Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference said, "This bill is a moral outrage, made worse by the deceptive nature of the arguments in its favor. The sponsors are calling it a 'cloning ban,' but in fact the exact opposite is true. According to the language of the bill, doctors in New York State could clone human beings, grow them in women's wombs or in a laboratory and then kill them for the harvesting of their stem cells. The only 'ban' is that the babies created through cloning would be prohibited by law from being born."

As religious leaders the world over are decrying the acceptance of this false distinction and the euphemisms and disinformation about cloning, the Singapore government, along with that of France, Argentina, Japan, Korea, Britain, Canada and many others are claiming that they have achieved a 'balance.'

See the Reuters coverage:
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=6134154§ion=news

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