Deck 7: Embryos, Stem Cells, and Cloning

Question 1

Which of the following statements is FALSE?

A) Leon Kass was one of the first to oppose both in vitro fertilization and human cloning.
B) Leon Kass believes that feelings of revulsion to human cloning justify banning it.
C) The diversity of the human gene pool is not threatened by reproductive cloning, as proved by the law of regression to the mean.
D) A dog has been cloned.
E) Hwang Woo Suk successfully cloned a human embryo.

Answer 1

Hwang Woo Suk successfully cloned a human embryo.

Question 2

Which of these is TRUE?

A) Father Richard McCormick rejects the argument that because we are unsure when human life begins, we should treat all human life as sacred.
B) The Human Embryo Research Panel of 1994 concluded that scientific research could proceed just fine with spare embryos already in existence and no new embryos needed to be created for medical research.
C) Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) made differentiated human cells revert to primordial, pluripotent states by fusing them with cow eggs, and it then grew a cloned human embryo to five weeks of age before destroying the embryo.
D) In a case in Tennessee about a divorcing couple who disagreed about what would happen to the embryos they had created and stored, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the husband did not have to become a father against his will and that the embryos could be destroyed.
E) The Dickey-Warner Amendment of 1996 to the appropriations bill for the National Institutes of Health allowed federal funds to be made available for 60 stem cell lines created from spare human embryos.

Answer 2

In a case in Tennessee about a divorcing couple who disagreed about what would happen to the embryos they had created and stored, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the husband did not have to become a father against his will and that the embryos could be destroyed.

Question 3

An Announcement that the lamb named "Dolly" had been created by cloning happened about which year?

A) 1971
B) 1997
C) 2005
D) 2001
E) 2000

Answer 3

1997

Question 4

Which of these statements is false?

A) The Obama administration loosened restrictions on research on human embryos imposed by the Bush administration.
B) The Indeterminacy Argument about embryonic cloning asserts that if you are unsure whether something is a person, you should err on the safe side and treat it as if it is a person.
C) To originate a baby by cloning, right now, some act of assisted reproduction would be required to bring a baby to birth.
D) Scientists have now cloned a lamb, cow, mouse, cat, and horse.
E) The only way to create stem cells is by using human embryos.

Question 5

Which of the following statements is FALSE about the ethical debate so far on human cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer)?

A) Leon Kass was one of the first to oppose both in vitro fertilization and human cloning.
B) One way to conceptualize a child originated by human cloning is as a delayed twin.
C) The diversity of the human gene pool is not threatened by reproductive cloning, as proved by the law of regression to the mean.
D) Leon Kass was Chair of President George W. Bush's Bioethics Commission.
E) The Brownback bill would have made reproductive cloning illegal but would have allowed embryonic cloning.

Question 6

What did President George W. Bush do in the summer of 2006 regarding federal funding of research with embryonic stem cells?

A) He expanded the number of embryonic stem cells available to scientists working with federal funds.
B) He vetoed a Congressional bill that would have loosened restrictions on federal funds for research with embryonic stem cells.
C) He vetoed a Congressional bill that allowed reproductive cloning or cloning-to-produce babies.
D) He passionately stated that the lives of innocent civilians in the Middle East were just as intrinsically valuable as frozen human embryos.
E) He signed a bill making it a federal crime to un-thaw a frozen embryo and destroy it without the signed permission of both gametic donors.

Question 7

The Argument for an Open Future objects to originating a child by cloning by arguing in part that:

A) Unreasonable and perhaps wrong expectations based on the chosen phenotype may be placed on a child created this way.
B) A child originated by cloning will be treated with prejudice by others and hence have a different, probably bad, future.
C) A child originated by cloning will not have a future because it will be sub-human and used as sources for organ transplants.
D) A child originated by cloning will not have a soul and hence, will not have an open future like normal children.
E) A child originated by cloning will be a delayed twin and hence, have no real future.