Banning Research Will Knock Us Out of the Race for Cures
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted by a sizable margin to ban all cloning of human embryos, even for scientific purposes. “This is about providing moral leadership for a watching world,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.). The world may well be watching, but if history is any guide, for every foreigner willing to take moral instruction from U.S. lawmakers there will be another willing to take profits by offering the same service offshore.
Sensenbrenner and the other would-be moral leaders defeated a less restrictive amendment offered by Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.), who asked, “Why would we condemn the world and future generations not to have this miracle?”
That, of course, will be the rallying cry of the researchers, spearheaded by such high-profile advocates as Michael J. Fox, Christopher Reeve and Mary Tyler Moore; they will raise their voices louder as the Senate considers the issue. The anti-cloners have a voice, too, as well as the fear factor; the Family Research Council called even Greenwood’s compromise measure a “Frankenstein bill.”
But if embryonic technology leads to Frankensteins, then it’s too late, because lots of those little monsters are already up and walking around. The first “test tube” baby was born in Britain in 1978; since 1981, some 45,000 American babies have been born using that same in vitro fertilization approach. And that’s the point: Embryo utilization, for a wide variety of purposes, is here to stay; indeed, it’s spreading worldwide. The U.S. can aspire to moral leadership if it wants, but the other 188 countries in the United Nations are free to go their own way.
It might be noted that past U.S. moralizing led to the enrichment of those who didn’t wish to be led. The U.S. prohibition on alcohol, for instance, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, made U.S. gangsters rich. And it made Canada’s liquor makers, operating legally on their side of the border--but producing a lot more booze than Canadians could possibly consume--even richer.
To be sure, sometimes, when a genuine moral consensus exists among nations, it’s possible to put a stop to a particular international practice. In the 19th century, for example, the world came together to end the slave trade. But such harmonic convergences are rare; more often countries agree to disagree, and that causes talent and capital to wander the world, looking for the best haven. There was a time, for example, when an American had to go to Sweden for a legal abortion, or to Canada to dodge the draft. More recently, Mexico has been the destination of choice for Americans looking for nonapproved medical treatments, such as laetrile, and the Netherlands has become a lifestyle enterprise zone for marijuana smokers.
And of course, since there’s no reliable international consensus on high tax rates, fiscal gamesmanship has transferred vast amounts of wealth across borders and oceans, searching for shelter. According to the CIA World Fact Book, the 10 richest countries in the world, as measured by 1999 per capita gross domestic product, include Luxembourg, Bermuda, Switzerland, Monaco and the Cayman Islands. In other words, governments can pass all the laws they want; the hard part is getting mobile people, and their mobile assets, to abide by them.
And so it will go with embryonic research. The United Kingdom is arguably America’s closest ally, but the research that the House wants to ban is legal there, and nobody over there is even considering a change. Indeed, Britain could enjoy an embryo-nomic boom thanks to its lenient laws; several prominent U.S. researchers have already announced plans to move their operations there. Other countries, too, are big in the biz; on the same day that the House voted, an Israeli team announced that it had used stem cells derived from embryos to produce insulin.
“There are ways for us to get these answers without messing with cloning,” said another would-be moral leader, Rep. W.J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.), on Tuesday. Maybe. But in the meantime, the race for cures is on, and the U.S. is choosing not to compete.
