Clone Dr caught selling embryos

Or, "How we will some day get our first cloned human neonate."

Once again, a scientist has shown that his judgment as to what is right and what he wants are the only limits on what he will do.

One of the researchers who works with the Korean veterinarian, Dr Wu Suk Hwang, in his experiments to produce embryonic stem cells, has been accused of helping to create embryos to sell. These are embryos created by the "usual" in vitro fertilization method, not cloned embryos, that are being sold. But why not cloned embryos? And why is it illegal to sell oocytes("eggs") to produce embryos for gestation, but perfectly fine to produce embryos for research?

How is it less coercive, more ethical to allow donation for research to cure disease than to allow donation for economic reasons? Where is tolerance and choice when a girl needs to earn a living? It seems ironic that men have sold their sperm without censure, but we women finally get a chance to earn money by selling our gametes and the rules suddenly change.

First of all, I admit that I have a different attitude than that of the cloners: It is much worse to kill embryos or to conduct research that depends on their destruction, whether cloned or IVF, than it is to implant them and give them a chance to live. The fundamental fact is that no human embryo should be created or used for any purpose except for the benefit of that human individual, himself. If there is no reasonable expectation of benefit to the human subject that is the embryo, then the action can never justify the means.

The case of the sympathetic entrepenurial cloner should not surprise anyone - if he's willing to kill, why not bend other rules?