Belgium Legalizes Assisted Suicide
Belgium has become the second country in the world to legalize assisted suicide.The bill passed the lower house of Parliament by a margin of 86 to 51 with 10 abstentions. Passage had been widely expected since the Belgian Senate approved the bill last year. (Last year the Netherlands became the first country to officially legalize assisted suicide.)
Belgium’s medical association opposed the bill, saying that it goes too far and that it allows some to commit suicide even though they might not otherwise die for years. In contrast to the Netherlands law, the Belgian law does not allow minors to seek assisted suicide. According to the BBC, the country’s Christian Democrat party may challenge the law in the European Court of Human Rights.
Cloning Debate Continues Both in Congress and in the States
Despite a promise by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to bring the competing cloning bills up for debate prior to the Memorial Day recess, the deadline came and passed with no action in the Senate. Both sides continue massive lobbying efforts to sway the remaining Senators who have not yet publicly taken a stand on the issue. In the mean time 38 laws to ban cloning have been introduced in 22 states. Six states currently ban some form of cloning.
Research continues to demonstrate the difficulty of success in cloning for medical treatments. Researchers at the University of Connecticut discovered that current cloning techniques produce “genetic imbalances” in the resulting stem cells, making it doubtful that they could be trans planted successfully. Physicists in the U.K. are now saying that cloning will never be successful because it violates the laws of classical physics—it is impossible to make an exact copy of anything, living or not.
In other cloning news, it has been discovered that the University of Missouri received a patent last year apparently covering human cloning and the products of cloning (potentially including any embryos, fetuses, or children who might result). While it is almost assuredly the case that any attempt to patent children would be challenged in court, the fact that the U.S. Patent Office )PTO) approved such a patent indicates that the PTO has changed its long standing policy of not patenting human beings (including human embryos).
U.K. Sperm Donor Children Want Access to Their Fathers
Currently, children conceived in the U.K. using donated sperm are prohibited from knowing who their biological fathers are. Upon turning 18, these children can learn certain characteristics about their fathers (such as hair color, height, and race), but some (including Baroness Warnock) are now calling for new laws that do not require anonymity. Warnock told the BBC,” lt’s absolutely deplorable for a child not to know what other children know.”
Some oppose increased disclosure of information due to fears of an ensuing decline in sperm and egg donations, which are already in short supply. However, the number of donations in Scandinavian countries where more open laws were recently adopted has remained fairly constant.
Court Requires Destruction of Human Embryos
The Washington State Supreme Court has decided that two frozen embryos created for David and Becky Litowitz should be destroyed, rather than awarding custody to either parent. The embryos, who were pro duced in 1996 at Linda Loma University’s Center for Fertility and In Vitro Fertilization in California, were created with David’s sperm and a donor egg.
In its decision, the court said that rights to the embryos do not rest on genetic relationship, but, rather, on the contractual agreement between the Litowitzes and Loma Linda. That contract stated that the embryos would be cryopreserved for five years unless the couple requested that they be preserved for an extended period of time. The court stated in its 8- 1 decision requiring the embryos’ destruction that,”It is not necessary for this court to engage in a legal, medical or philosophical discussion” concerning whether the embryos are”children” or whether Becky Litowitz should legally be considered their parent.”We base our decision in this case solely upon the contractual rights of the parties under the pre-embryo cryopreservation contract.” However, the contract did not specify what should happen to the embryos in the case of divorce.
David Litowitz desires to put the embryos up for adoption, while Becky intends to implant them in a surrogate and raise the children herself.
