Thursday, February 27, 2003

Science, schmience (part 2)

Leave it to the US House of Representatives to demonstrate the nation’s commitment to being at the forefront of scientific research in the 21st century.  By a roll call vote of 241-155, the House passed H.R. 534, a total ban on all human cloning.  That includes research into basic mechanisms of disease, opportunities for understanding and resolving genetically-related diseases, and much more.  The Senate has not yet considered this bill, so this isn’t yet the law of the land.

I’m sure it’s just an ironic coincidence that this bill was passed by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay’s House of Representatives 50 years to the day after Francis Crick let it be known that he and James Watson had solved the structure of DNA.