Sunday, January 5

David Frum reminds me of reasons for me to dislike George W. Bush: his party is less economically libertarian than the Republican Party of the 1980's and 1990's, the tax code continues to bulk up with benefits meant to encourage government-preferred activities, there is not much talk of a deregulation agenda, he's presiding over the growth of entitlements--the expansion of Medicaid, the biggest farm bill in history, while he jettisoned school vouchers and abandoned Social Security reform. Meanwhile, he's been more aggressive on his social agenda, banning most stem-cell research. And speaking of which, Gina Kolata explains the difference between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning:

therapeutic cloning, which would create replacement cells for sick people, cells that their bodies would not reject because they would be genetically identical to their own. They want to cure diseases, not create cloned humans.
What Clonaid said it did is reproductive cloning, which creates humans but has no role in curing disease.
Not that I've got anything against asexual reproduction! Philip Boffey dismisses all the criticisms of reproductive cloning, only to say, "For the immediate future, Congress would be wise to ban reproductive cloning as far too risky while allowing therapeutic cloning to proceed." I don't get it.

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