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THESE have been a wild few days for biomedicine. At the National Academy of
Sciences in Washington DC, Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori and
his colleagues defended their plans to clone a human, facing a hostile audience.
And over at the White House, President George W. Bush relaxed his opposition to
the use of federal funds for research on human stem cells
(see “Clone encounters”
and “Two cheers”).
Both events signal changes in thinking about the most controversial issues in
biomedicine. Arguments that present absolute moral rights are giving way to
considerations of the common good. The influence of…