Ow! It’s the Whining of Self-Described Moderates!
By The political fight over animal cloning is just beginning. It’s a lot like the fight over human cloning, except that the roles are reversed. Right-wing groups and Republican senators fanned fear and ignorance about human cloning; left-wing groups and Democratic senators are fanning fear and ignorance about animal cloning. Moderates on both sides get trampled. So do principles. The same liberals who demand stem-cell research using human embryos and who blasted the FDA for delaying approval of emergency contraception now accuse the FDA of recklessly approving cloned food.
I’m not really a specialist in this area, largely because I don’t really care about cloned food, but this strikes me as a classic Slate “pox on both their houses” paragraph, with a bone to the uncherished middle tossed in. But even I, a simple caveman, can see that there’s some nonsense being pushed here.
Right-wing groups and Republican senators fanned fear and ignorance about human cloning; left-wing groups and Democratic senators are fanning fear and ignorance about animal cloning.
Has anyone come out in favor of human cloning? Is there really a “political fight” about it? Yes, wingnuts fly into hysterics at the very idea, but I don’t remember a lot of leftists thinking that human cloning is a great idea, either. Indeed, apart from the word “cloning” I’m flummoxed as to what the relationship between the two debates is. Moreover, whatever leftish opposition to animal cloning exists is presented, quite clearly, in public health and policy terms, questions which are subject to evidentiary examination. Human cloning evokes an entirely different set of questions and debates. Lord Saletan is playing fast and loose…
The same liberals who demand stem-cell research using human embryos and who blasted the FDA for delaying approval of emergency contraception now accuse the FDA of recklessly approving cloned food.
Huh. Well, now that I know I’ll be denounced for inconsistency if I don’t say either a) that the FDA should approve everything immediately, or b) that the FDA should never approve anything ever, I think I’ll refrain from taking any positions on what the FDA approves. Not too difficult, since it already describes my policy on the FDA. I’m also uncertain that liberals “demand stem-cell research using human embryos”; if other options were available and just as useful, this wouldn’t be a political question at all. The liberal position on these questions, to the extent that one can be described, clearly seems to be built around pragmatic public policy concerns, the basic “principle” at stake being an increase in human health.
The thing is, I largely agree with Saletan about cloned animals. Some of the objections that Saletan details are silly. But Lord Saletan can’t resist the impulse to be Mercutio; he can’t simply lay out the case for genetically modified foods without also trying to construct some “moderate” meta-narrative. The thing is, conservatives don’t read Slate anyway, and aren’t going to start. I have to wonder why he and Weisberg and Shafer and Dickerson bother.