Human Cloning - Saskatchewan Elocution and Debate Association

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SEDA The Saskatchewan Elocution and Debate Association (SEDA) is a non-profit organization that promotes speech and debate activities in English and French. The Association is active throughout the province from grade 6 through grade 12, and at the University of Regina and the University of Saskatchewan. The Association co-ordinates an annual program of speech and debate tournaments and other special activities, including a model legislature. SEDA’s staff, along with printed and audio-visual materials, are available to assist any individual or group interested in elocution and debate. SEDA is a registered charitable organization. Charitable No. 11914 0077 RR0001. For further information: Saskatchewan Elocution and Debate Association 1860 Lorne Street Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 2L7 Telephone: (306) 780-9243 Fax: (306) 781-6021 E-Mail: info@saskdebate.com Web: http://www.saskdebate.com SEDA receives funding from SEDA PATRONS Honorary Patron - Hon. Dr. Lynda M. Haverstock, Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan Saskatchewan Lotteries Trust Fund for Sport, Culture, and Recreation Saskatchewan Law Foundation Celebrate Canada Committee for Saskatchewan Luther College High School Official Minority Language Office, Department of Education Dr. and Mrs. Morris Shumiatcher, Q.C. Dr. & Mrs. John Archer Olivia Shumski Affiliations Canadian Student Debating Federation SaskCulture Inc.
Brave New World Page 1 of 5 Smithsonian, December 2001 Title: Brave New World: Everything You Wanted to Know About Stem Cells, Cloning and Genetic Engineering but Were Afraid to Ask. Author: James Trefil Source: Smithsonian, p38 Date: Dec. 2001 It was not by chance that President Bush's first televised address, last August, was about stem cell research, coming as it did at the height of a summer swirling with heated debate over the issue ("one of the most profound of our time," according to the President). That and other recent debates have raised questions not only about changes in science and medicine but about such profound issues as the nature and value of human life, and whether humans have the moral right to tamper with genetic material, on the one hand, or the obligation to develop technologies that would alleviate the suffering of millions, on the other. Such questions are important, but only by understanding the science involved can we begin to address the ethical conundrums coming our way. With nearly every advance in medicine, from the smallpox vaccine to organ transplants, there has been controversy over how much we should be altering nature. When Louise Brown, the world's first test-tube baby (now a healthy 23-year-old), was born in England in 1978, some people called conception outside the body immoral and tried to have the technique banned. Back in the 1970s, science made advances in two areas that seemed, on the surface, unrelated — but which have veered ever closer to each other. One was a growing understanding of, and ability to manipulate, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the molecule that provides our genetic code. The other involved the advent of in vitro fertilization (IVF), the technology responsible for Louise Brown and nearly a million babies since. IVF is a process by which eggs are removed surgically from a woman's ovaries and fertilized with sperm in a laboratory. After undergoing a few cell divisions, several of the resulting embryos are inserted into a woman's uterus where, with luck, at least one will develop into a full-term fetus. In any one trial of IVF, as many as 10 to 20 eggs may be extracted and fertilized, and the majority of the resulting embryos are often frozen at an early stage of development, in case they will be needed for later attempts at implantation in the uterus. Though IVF offered new hope to many who could not otherwise conceive, it also opened up a slew of ethical questions, beginning with the status of those embryos that remain unused in the lab. Then there is the fact that the woman who donates the egg need not be the one who carries the embryo or who raises the child. It is, in fact, possible to have as many as five adults who could claim parenthood in an IVF scenario: the sperm donor, the egg donor, the woman who carries the fetus and a couple responsible for its upbringing. Still, for all the potential issues it raises, IVF was in many ways just the beginning, a relatively simple manipulation of the natural order. The closer science has gotten to deciphering our genetic makeup, the more complicated the landscape has grown. GENES AND DNA By the middle of the 20th century, scientists had begun to realize that "genes" — the name given to whatever it was that passed down inherited traits — were made of DNA and that they were located on chromosomes, threadlike structures found in cell nuclei of almost all living things. For molecular biologists, the second half of the 20th century was devoted to divining the structure of the DNA molecule (the double helix, discovered in 1953) and then figuring out how the molecule's fundamental components — called nucleotides — combined to form genes, how genes provided the instructions for making the molecules that allow living things to function, which genes did what, and where they were located. Just last year, scientists announced that they'd sequenced the human genome. Though they are far from figuring out what all of our genes do, they now know the order and location on our chromosomes of all of the nucleotides and have identified about half of our genes. Much of the research on human DNA has focused on diseases
Page 1: SASKATCHEWAN ELOCUTION AND DEBATE A
Page 5 and 6: Brave New World Page 3 of 5 Smithso
Page 7 and 8: Brave New World Page 5 of 5 Smithso
Page 9 and 10: If Not Today, Tomorrow Page 2 of 4
Page 11 and 12: If Not Today, Tomorrow Page 4 of 4
Page 13 and 14: Man and superman Page 2 of 3 The Ec
Page 15 and 16: Seeing Double: The Cloning Conundru
Page 23 and 24: Send in the clones Page 1 of 1 Cana
Page 25 and 26: The Threat of Biotech Page 2 of 3 C
Page 27 and 28: This embryonic cloning is worth pur
Page 29 and 30: Ban cloning. Do you copy? Page 2 of
Page 31: Ban cloning, not its life-saving co

Human Cloning - Saskatchewan Elocution and Debate Association

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