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Trials in Absentia (last updated February 13, 2003) (back to top) You do have the Sixth Amendment right to be present at your trial, but you give up the right if you voluntarily do not show up past a certain point in the proceedings. If this defendant had known that a trial might commence without him, then he could have been tried and convicted in absentia. If a defendant disappears after a trial begins, then a court can continue with the trial in absentia under both New York law and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 43(b). However, New York courts and federal courts differ on what to do if a defendant disappears before trial begins. New York courts generally allow a trial to proceed if the defendant was informed beforehand that a trial would proceed if he or she did not appear, but federal courts are not allowed to begin the trial at all. In a 1993 decision, the United States Supreme Court justified this timing-based distinction in part because defendants may not have known that trial could proceed without them and thus they may not knowingly have waived their Sixth Amendment right. Sources : Crosby v. United States, 506 U.S. 255 (1993), on-line here. Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure : Cases and Commentary (Fifth edition) (West Publishing Co., 1996). The Monroe County, New York Assigned Counsel Program also has information on New York law's Parker warnings on-line here.  The Establishment Clause (updated August 15, 2002) (back to top) Under the First Amendment's Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"; see full text here), the government's ability to endorse or support religious activities is limited. How far the limitations go is subject to constitutional scrutiny, often under a test set out in the Supreme Court case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). Under the Lemon test, a statute or governmental action relating to religion or religious expression must meet three criteria in order to be permissible under the Establishment Clause. The statute or action must (1) have a secular purpose, (2) its principal or primary effect must not advance nor inhibit religion, and (3) it must not foster "an excessive government entangling with religion." Variations of the Lemon test have arisen over time, such as the endorsement analysis used for determining the constitutionality of public religious displays. That being said, the Establishment Clause does not prohibit purely religious activities or speech by individuals, and it does not eliminate religion from schools and other public settings. Students can pray or read their Bibles in school as long as they are not engaged in school activities or instruction. Teachers can still teach about religion and the Bible or the Koran, as long as they do not provide religious instruction or tell their students to believe a particular way. In fact, the Clinton administration released a set of guidelines in 1995 and a revised set in 1998 to help schools know the limits of the First Amendment and to set proper policies before any problems arose. The Establishment Clause often comes up in several contexts, several of which are discussed below.
Religious Persecution in China (last updated December 12, 2002) (back to top) China's policy towards religion has loosened since the days of Mao Tse-Tung, but critics say that the government continues to persecute on the basis of religion. Christianity is spreading rapidly in China and practitioners have reported incidents of persecution, but the main target of religious persecution since early 1999 seems to be the Falun Gong (Wheel of the Law, also known as Falun Dafa) spiritual movement, which does not consider itself a religion. The United States has urged China for several years to improve its treatment of religion, designating China a "country of particular concern" in 1999, 2000, and 2001 under the International Religious Freedom Act for what it considers particularly severe violations of religious freedom. A State Department report on religious freedom around the world, released in October 2002, noted that the government's respect for religious freedom remained "poor, especially for many unregistered religious groups and spiritual movements such as the Falun Gong," and that membership in many faiths was "growing rapidly" nonetheless. Officially, the Chinese Constitution provides for freedom of religious belief and the criminal law states that government officials depriving citizens of religious freedom can be sentenced to prison time. Government figures reported in 1997 that there were more than 200 million religious adherents, including 100 million Buddhists, 20 million Muslims, and 10 to 15 million Protestants. Even so, as noted above, the government seeks to restrict religious practice to government-sanctioned organizations and has cracked down on religious activities that were not so approved. China has focused in particular on the Falun Gong movement that first came to widespread public attention in early 1999 and that was officially banned as a cult in October 1999; the US State Department says that there are credible reports of abuse and torture of detained Falun Gong practitioners. Estimates differ on how many Falun Gong practitioners there are in China; the government says 2.1 million people, while experts say there were tens of millions before the crackdown began. Reports indicate that China generally tolerates various denominations of Christianity but with some troubling exceptions. China does recognize a Catholic Church (though it has not established diplomatic relations with the Holy See) but has allegedly cracked down on and destroyed unregistered Catholic churches. At the same time, the government has approved the printing and import of Bibles, and there are reportedly more than 22 million Bibles in print in China. Some of the Chinese government's fears undoubtedly stem from the Taiping Rebellion of the 1800s, a nearly successful rebellion led by a man who believed himself to be Jesus's Chinese brother. Sources: The International Religious Freedom Report for 2002, by the United States' Department of State, is on-line here. The Human Rights Wach report on China is available here. Alien Tort Claims Act (last updated December 12, 2002) (back to top) A 1789 law that was little-used for almost 200 years but gained new force in the 1980s and 1990s has made federal courts in the United States a venue for lawsuits over wrongs committed around the world. But while such lawsuits often attract publicity and can result in large judgments, few plaintiffs have successfully collected their judgments against current and former government officials since U.S. law does not limit sovereign immunity or make special provisions for collecting such judgments. The Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, 28 U.S.C. 1350, grants jurisdiction in federal court over "any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or by a treaty in the United States." The Second Circuit Court of Appeals (covering New York, Connecticut and Vermont) held in the 1980 case Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F.2d 876, that this previously little-known provision enabled Paraguayan citizens to bring a lawsuit against a former Paraguayan official for torture in a United States federal court, and this reading was subsequently reified and even broadened by Congress with the Torture Victim Prevention Act of 1991. According to cases subsequently decided by the Second Circuit, plaintiffs can use the Alien Tort Claims Act to bring torture claims when perpetrated by government officials acting "under the color of official authority," and by private parties if their "conduct is undertaken under the color of state authority or violates a norm of international law that is recognized as extending to the conduct of private parties." Plaintiffs must still comply with other requirements in bringing lawsuits, and thus must, among other things, serve defendants while they are present in the United States. Sources: Wiwa v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. (2d Cir. 2000), available on-line here. Anne-Marie Slaughter and David L. Bosco, Alternative Justice, an essay on-line here. Assisted Suicide (last updated November 14, 2002) (back to top) Nearly all states prohibit assisted suicide. In New York, for example, intentionally causing or aiding someone to commit suicide is considered manslaughter in the second degree under Penal Law 125.15, and is punishable by up to 15 years in jail. In recent years, many people have tried to change laws prohibiting physician-assisted suicide in the political arena and in the courts. Most of these efforts have ultimately failed, with Oregon the first and still only state to have permitted physician-assisted suicide in certain circumstances. Voters in Oregon approved a citizen's initiative authorizing physician-assisted suicide in 1994 and again in 1997, and 91 terminally-ill patients died from 1998 to 2001after ingesting lethal doses authorized by the statute. The federal government has sought to block this law for being in violation of its interpretation of the federal Controlled Substances Act, and is appealing an April 2002 decision by a federal district judge that upheld the state law. Doctors in Washington State and New York challenged their respective states' laws prohibiting assisted suicide in the 1990s, arguing that allowing terminally-ill patients to refuse medical treatment but not allowing them to receive fatal doses of medical treatment was unconstitutional. The United States Supreme Court rejected these challenges in 1997, holding that there was no constitutional right to commit suicide or to have assistance in doing so. Laws prohibiting assisted-suicide thus can be undone only through the political process, not through the courts. Sources: Oregon's Department of Human Resources has information on the state's Death with Dignity Act on-line here; a summary of the 2001 annual report on the law is on-line here. United States Supreme Court decisions in Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill, the cases brought by doctors in Washington State and New York, are on-line here and here, respectively. Privacy Rights in the Constitution (last updated November 6, 2002) (back to top) The word "privacy" does not ever appear in the United States Constitution, but the Supreme Court nonetheless recognized in Roe v Wade that the Constitution does ensure "a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy." Supreme Court Justices have found the roots of this general privacy right in the "penumbra" cast by the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, as well as the concept of liberty guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the idea of constitutionally-protected privacy/autonomy rights beyond those specifically listed in the Bill of Rights (on-line here) is still controversial and some justices and scholars – particularly those who describe themselves as textualists or strict constructionists – are especially skeptical. They generally view the Constitution as protecting only those rights specifically listed in the Constitution and its amendments (such as the right to free speech), and they trust in the political system to prevent egregious laws or actions from ever getting passed or done in the first place. Aside from such privacy-as-autonomy rights, there are certain well-established rights to be free from prosecution based on certain kinds of government surveillance, intrusion and coercion. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments do not establish general privacy rights, but the Fourth (on-line here) does protect people from "unreasonable" searches and seizures, and the Fifth (on-line here) protects people from being coerced into speaking against themselves. Whether e-mails are admissible as evidence in a criminal case has nothing to do with privacy-as-autonomy rights or the status of abortion rights, but whether a person's expectation of privacy in those e-mails would be respected under the Fourth Amendment. A constitutional debate continues over the scope of privacy-as-autonomy rights and the areas where the government cannot regulate or intrude on individuals' choices and actions. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in Roe v. Wade that "only personal rights that can be deemed 'fundamental' or 'implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' are included in this guarantee of personal privacy." The question then is which rights are so fundamental or implicit to be protected; justices have said one must look to tradition to decide this, but that raises more questions of whose tradition and at what level of generality one should look. This kind of privacy-as-autonomy right began with the first abortion case, Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965), in which the Court invalidated a Connecticut law that allowed the government to fine anyone who used any contraception means on the grounds that the law would enable police to search marital bedrooms for the use of contraceptives. In Roe v. Wade, a majority of the Supreme Court held that the privacy-as-autonomy right was "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." Beyond abortion, the Supreme Court has decided a few cases that indicate an acknowledgement of some privacy-as-autonomy rights but not others. The right to marry was considered (but not held to be) fundamental in Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 US 374 (1978). The right for homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy was not, Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 US 186 (1986), though some justices argued that the Court should have considered the right in question to be more general as to whether one had the right to have consensual sex without government interference. Police officers do not have a fundamental right to have whatever hairstyle they choose, according to Kelley v. Johnson, 425 US 238 (1976), although the Court did indicate that the general citizenry might. Finally, people do not have a constitutional right to die that trumps whatever procedures a state may impose before allowing the refusal of unwanted medical treatment, Curzan v. Director of Missouri Department of Health, 497 US 261 (1990). Ultimately, as in any murky area of constitutional law, the best protection for privacy rights may be political. If no law impinging on any kind of privacy is passed or no action taken, then individual privacy is most assured. The Supreme Court seems sympathetic but is less certain to step in. For more on abortion rights, go here. Sources: Supreme Court cases, such as Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973), are on-line via Findlaw.com. Gerald Gunther and Kathleen M. Sullivan, Constitutional Law (13th edition) (The Foundation Press, Inc. 1997). Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure : Cases and Commentary (Fifth edition) (West Publishing Co., 1996). Death Penalty (last updated October 30, 2002) (back to top) Hundreds of people are sentenced to death each year in 38 states and in some federal courts, though the pace of new sentences far outpaces that of actual executions. Studies in recent years have drawn attention to errors in how capital punishment is applied and have shown that some people are wrongfully convicted, let alone improperly sentenced. In particular, Illinois has become a bellwether state for capital punishment, due to several highly publicized cases in which 13 people were found over a 10-year period to be innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted and sentenced to death. On January 31, 2000, Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan declared a moratorium on all state executions until a commission could recommend changes in the application of capital punishment. That commission made an extensive series of 85 recommendations on April 15, 2002. Between 1930 and 1999, the state and federal governments of the United States executed more than 4,400 people. In 1999 alone, 98 people were executed while about 3,500 people remained on death row, according to the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.       Carnegie Deli Shooting (last updated September 10, 2002) (back to top) Sean Salley, 30, and Andre Smith, 31, were convicted June 18, 2002 on several murder, robbery and weapons counts in connection with the May 10, 2001 shooting in an apartment above the Carnegie Deli, a famous restaurant just north of New York City's Times Square. Three people were killed and two injured in the incident; one of the three killed was Jennifer Stahl, an actress who had a small role in the movie "Dirty Dancing" and who reportedly used the apartment to sell marijuana. In July 2002, both Salley and Smith were sentenced to 120 years to life in prison. Sources: An Associated Press article on the sentencing is available on-line here. The Death of Kurt Cobain (last updated October 16, 2002) (back to top) Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, then 27 years old, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in his Seattle home on April 8, 1994, and his death was ruled a suicide by Seattle police after 40 days of investigation. Cobain's death followed weeks of suicide attempts and threats, according to a 2001 biography by Charles R. Cross. In early March, Cobain was hospitalized in Rome in an apparent non-fatal suicide attempt, and weeks later, police were called to his Seattle home to stop another attempt. Friends and family, including Cobain's wife Courtney Love, conducted an intervention in late March, after which Cobain checked into a rehabilitation facility. He stayed with the treatment for only a few days and then returned to Seattle without telling his wife, who was going through a detoxification process herself at the same time. Nonetheless, some have tried casting doubt on the finding that Cobain's death was by suicide, but have not managed to shake that determination or re-open the case. The two leading proponents of the murder theory seem to be Tom Grant, a private detective who was originally hired by Courtney Love to locate Cobain after he had gone missing and who apparently believes Cobain was too high on heroin to be capable of committing suicide, and Love's father, Hank Harrison, who apparently has a long history of family problems with his daughter. Both Grant and Harrison apparently never met Cobain, but both have speculated that Love had a motive for having her husband killed. According to them, Cobain was thinking about divorcing Love and/or changing his will to reduce or eliminate her future rights to the songs and earnings of Nirvana. Additionally, a man who went by the stage name "El Duce" has said Love once offered him money to kill Cobain, but he did not think she was serious at the time; he died in 1997 shortly after being interviewed by documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield. That documentary, "Kurt and Courtney," gave widespread publicity to the various murder theories, in part due to the battles surrounding its release. "Kurt and Courtney" was to be shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival but was withdrawn by festival organizers just before its start. EMI Music reportedly warned festival organizers that Broomfield had not gotten permission to use Nirvana and Hole songs in the film, though Broomfield told the New York Times that the BBC had given proper licensing for the television performances he used in the film. Broomfield apparently overhauled the movie to remove the songs from his movie when it opened in San Francisco two months later. Even with the changes, the movie still faced difficulties getting released. Shortly before its premiere at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco, Love's lawyers reportedly warned the theater that "we are told that Mr. Broomfield's movie conveys the message that Ms. Love killed her husband Kurt Cobain or somehow participated in his murder. Such accusations are false and defamatory, nothing more." In fact, while the movie does explore the theories that Love was somehow involved in the death of her husband, Broomfield does not accuse her of doing so and expresses a growing skepticism in the validity of such theories. Love was involved in a legal battle with the Universal Music Group (parent of EMI Music) that was resolved in the fall of 2002; it began with Universal suing Love in 2000 for deciding to stop making her contractually-obligated recordings for Universal. In 2001, Love also sued Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, the two surviving members of Nirvana, to block the release of a planned compilation that would have included a song recorded shortly before Cobain's death, "You Know You're Right." The various lawsuits settled in September 2002, with Love released from her contract and Universal allowed to release new Nirvana records, including the previously planned compilation. Sources: "Kurt and Courtney," a documentary by Nick Broomfield (Fox Lorber Films, 1998). Charles R. Cross, Heavier than Heaven (Hyperion, 2001). Ian Halperin and Max Wallace, Who Killed Kurt Cobain? The mysterious death of an icon (Birch Lane Press, 1998). Timothy Egan, Kurt Cobain, hesitant poet of 'grunge rock,' dead at 27, New York Times, April 9, 1994. Bernard Weinraub, Festival drops Cobain documentary, New York Times, January 16, 1998. New York Times, The Chill of Death, March 3, 1998. Neil Strauss, The Pop Life: Celene Dion says no on all points, New York Times, April 8, 1998. Neil Strauss, The Pop Life : Smells Like Mean Spirits, New York Times, December 13, 2001. Neil Strauss, The Pop Life : David vs. Goliath to a Rock Beat, New York Times, October 3, 2001. Suicide (last updated October 12, 2002) (back to top) More people die in the United States by suicide than by homicide each year, with about 30,000 deaths per year and about 500,000 people requiring emergency medical treatment from an attempted suicide. The overall suicide rate in the United States has held at about 11-12 suicides per 100,000 people, but varied among specific groups; the rate among young people has almost tripled in recent decades while other groups have seen either stable rates or declines. Public officials have been pointing more attention to the problem of suicide in the United States and around the world in recent years. In the United States, Surgeon General David Satcher called in 1999 for greater awareness and intervention, and a national strategy to improve suicide prevention was launched in 2001. These efforts have sought greater recognition of suicide as a preventable public health problem and reduced access to lethal means of self-harm. Another topic of concern has been improving the ways in which suicide is portrayed and discussed, particularly in the news media. Many experts have warned about the risk of "cluster suicides" or "suicide contagion," in which the number of suicides has increased when the number of stories about individual suicides increases, when a particular death is reported in detail, or when headlines are particularly dramatic. Accordingly, some have urged the media to avoid reporting a suicide in such a way that readers and viewers either identify with victims or see suicide as an acceptable solution or a way of getting attention, to not report detailed methods of committing suicide, and to avoid oversimplifying the reasons behind a suicide such as tying them to any one particular factor such as a traumatic event, a particular time of year, or identification with a celebrity. Nationally, there were 11.3 suicides per 100,000 people in 1998. While women are more likely to attempt committing suicide, men are about four times more likely than women to die by suicide. Native American men (including both American Indian and Alaskan natives) face the highest rates of suicide; in 1999, there were about 41.8 suicide per 100,000 Native American men, almost four times the national rate. About 3 out of five suicides are committed with a firearm. The following chart breaks down the death rates by suicide among men and women in different age groups, comparing the rates in 1950 and in 1998. Data is taken from the National Center for Health Statistics' Health, United States, 2001 report.
Teenage Sexual Activity (last updated January 11, 2002) (back to top) About half of all never-married teenagers aged 15-19 years old had had sexual intercourse at least once in 1995. According to surveys, the percentage of male teenagers who are sexually experienced has fluctuated around 70 percent, whereas the percentage of female teenagers who are sexually experienced has risen from about 30 percent in 1971 to about 50 percent in the 1990s.   John Philip Walker Lindh (last updated October 7, 2002) (back to top) Referred in some popular media as the so-called "American Taliban," US citizen John Philip Walker Lindh was found fighting with al-Qaeda against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in late 2001, returned to the United States and charged in January 2002 with aiding terrorist organizations, and was scheduled to face trial in late August 2002. Instead, Walker pled guilty on July 15, 2002 on a count of supplying services to the Taliban. In return, the United States agreed to drop the eight other charges, which included conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals. Walker was sentenced on October 4, 2002 to 20 years in prison on two counts, along with three additional years of supervised release. According to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Anne E. Asbury, Walker converted to Islam around 1997, traveled to Yemen for study in 1998 and in early 2000, traveled to Pakistan in October 2000 to continue his studies, and then joined a paramilitary training camp run by the Harakut ul-Mujahideen (HUM) to fight on behalf of that terrorist organization in Kashmir, the controversial province currently under India's control but sought by Pakistan. HUM has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US Department of State since 1997. In June 2001, Walker traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban and was referred to an Arabic mujahideen group that Walker was told was run by Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Walker underwent seven weeks of training at the camp and was then deployed to the front line in Takhar. His group retreated from US air strikes to Kunduz, where his group negotiated a surrender with Northern Alliance Forces. Walker was then transported ultimately to the Qala-I Janghi compound near Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistan, where he was interrogated and detained; this occurred shortly after a prison uprising near Mazar-e Sharif, in which CIA operative Michael Spann and several Afghans were killed. When first captured in late 2001, government officials were considering charging Lindh with treason, but decided ultimately to indict Lindh on conspiracy charges relating to September 11 and other murders of American citizens. He was then indicted on a charge of conspiring to murder US nationals, charges related to helping HUM, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban, and charges of using, carrying, and possessing firearms and destructive devices during crimes of violence. Lindh was brought back to the United States in late January 2002. A magistrate judge denied bail on February 7 and, on February 15, US District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III set August 26 for jury selection in Walker's case, meaning that the trial would have opened a few days later. Walker pled not guilty on February 13, and finally changed his plea to guilty five months later. Sources: The January 15, 2002 press briefing in which Ashcroft announced charges is on-line here. The complaint is on-line here, and the indictment is on-line here. The District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, where Judge T.S. Ellis III sits, is on-line here. The DOJ has collected statements and releases here. Self-Representation (last updated September 10, 2002) (back to top) A criminal defendant has the right under the Sixth Amendment and the Supreme Court's decision in the landmark 1963 case of Gideon v. Wainwright to have counsel provided if unable to afford one on his or her own. However, a defendant also has the constitutional right to represent him- or herself and make his or her own defense personally, as held by the United States Supreme Court in Faretta v. California, 422 US 806 (1975). Recent examples of defendants who have chosen to represent themselves include Representative Jim Trafficant, alleged 20th-hijakcer Zaccarias Moussaoui, and former Bosnian president Slobodan Milosevic. Self-representation theoretically can be an effective strategy in rallying jury sympathy for the defendant, but is generally not recommended. A defendant must petition the court for permission to represent him- or herself, and the court may grant the petition after making some inquiries. First, the court must make an inquiry into whether the defendant is competent to waive counsel and that he has in fact knowingly, intelligently, voluntarily, and unequivocally foregone the benefits of having a lawyer, and must decide that he or she has done so before granting the petition. As the Supreme Court majority wrote in Faretta: "Although a defendant need not himself have the skill and experience of a lawyer in order competently and intelligently to choose self-representation, he should be made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation, so that the record will establish that 'he knows what he is doing and his choice is made with eyes open.'" In making the required inquiry, federal judges generally ask defendants who want to proceed on their own some questions about the defendant's understanding of the charges and possible consequences, and about his or her familiarity with the Federal Rules of Evidence that govern how a courtroom operates. Judges generally recommend against defendants' self-representation. Failure to conduct such a waiver inquiry can result in the overturning of a conviction. Second, the court can deny the petition if the court finds that the defendant is unable to abide by rules of procedure and courtroom protocol. As the Supreme Court majority said in the Faretta case, "the right to self-representation is not a license to abuse the dignity of the courtroom." The court can also take some steps to ensure smoother functioning of the courtroom. Whether or not the self-representing defendant wants, the court may still appoint standby counsel to aid the defendant and take over if need be. Sources: Stephen A. Saltzburg and Daniel J. Capra, American Criminal Procedure: cases and commentary (Fifth Edition) (West Publishing Co. 1996). Stem Cells and Cloning (last updated February 6, 2002) (back to top) Embryonic stem cells have been controversial in recent years, first because of their derivation from aborted fetuses, and since late 2001 because of their connection with a particular kind of human, non-reproductive cloning. Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can self-renew indefinitely and that can develop into more mature cells with specialized functions, and embryonic stem (ES) cells, which are derived from an early-stage embryo, are especially promising because they potentially could be developed into a wide variety of tissues for transplantation into patients with diseases such as Alzheimer's. What first made ES cell lines so controversial is that they have generally been derived from sources such as aborted fetuses and embryos resulting from in-vitro fertilization, thus raising questions as to whether such embryos are alive and should be used for such research. Whether the federal government should fund the development of such cells grew into a major policy question in recent years, culminating with President George W. Bush's decision on August 9, 2001 to allow federal funding for research on then-existing stem cell lines as long as the lines were derived from embryos that were already destroyed and that had not been created specifically for research. "We should allow federal funds to be used for research on these existing stem cell lines, where the life and death decision has already been made," Bush said in his first major public speech since his inauguration. "Leading scientists tell me research on these 60 lines has great promise that could lead to breakthrough therapies and cures. This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research without crossing a fundamental moral line, by providing taxpayer funding that would sanction or encourage further destruction of human embryos that have at least the potential for life." As of February 2002, the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry, which is run by the National Institutes of Health, counted 72 stem cell lines at 11 laboratories (five in the United States, including a Wisconsin-based group that had patented several lines, two in Sweden and India each, and one in Australia and Israel each) as meeting the criteria that Bush established. Still, some scientists have criticized Bush's order for limiting the development of more and better-quality stem cell lines. In any case, Bush's order did not go so far as to ban private research that did not meet his criteria; such research simply has to go on without federal funding. The debates over stem cells became intertwined with that over cloning in November 2001, when a Massachusetts-based company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced that it had attempted to create ES cells through nuclear transplantation, or somatic cell nuclear transfer. This process involves taking an egg and replacing its nucleus with one taken from an adult subject. This reconstructed cell is then stimulated to begin dividing and will produce a pre-implantation embryo, what is called a blastocyst. All known successful cloning attempts have started this way, but what happens next depends on the ultimate purpose behind the cloning. In reproductive cloning, the blastocyst is then implanted into a uterus so that it can form a fetus, which then can develop into a genetically identical match to the adult subject that provided the implanted nucleus; this is how the sheep Dolly was created in 1996. In therapeutic cloning, however, cells from the blastocyst are isolated and then used to make a stem cell line for further research and clinical applications; the blastocyst is not implanted into a uterus and does not ever become a fetus. Advanced Cell Technology's hope was that scientists could use cloned human embryos to create ES cells that could develop into tissues that would perfectly match the person who was cloned, thus ensuring that the person's body would accept such tissue transplants and not reject them as foreign. Advanced Cell Technology reported that it had successfully transplanted a human nucleus into a human egg, but that the most successful resulting embryo still did not grow enough to produce a blastocyst that could yield stem cells, stopping growth after dividing into only six cells. Advanced Cell Technology also tried creating cloned embryos through another method called parthenogenesis, by which eggs are stimulated to divide into early embryos. Of the 22 eggs chemically induced via parthogenesis, all died, and none developed the inner cell mass that yields stem cells. Nevertheless, even these limited results set off a new wave of controversy over cloning. "The use of embryos to clone is wrong. We should not as a society grow life to destroy it," Bush said in a ceremony soon after the announcement, and he quickly established a bioethics commission headed by University of Chicago professor Leo Kass to make recommendations on the subject. That commission met for the first time in January 2002. Bush has called for a ban on all cloning. The House of Representatives passed such a bill in July 2001, which would ban cloning of any kind and subject violators to criminal penalties such as prison and fines. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) has introduced a measure that would also ban cloning for any purpose, though the Senate has not yet considered it. Scientists and politicians have generally supported a ban on human reproductive cloning, but many scientists have opposed a total ban on all kinds, urging legislators to distinguish between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. The National Academies' National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, for example, recommended public funding of stem cell production in September 2001 and then recommended in January 2002 a ban on human reproductive cloning for at least five years. Sources: President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission did a report on cloning in September 1997, available on-line here, and a report on stem cells in September 1999, available here. The National Academies did a report on reproductive cloning in January 2002 and a report on stem cells in September 2001; both are available via the Academies' website, on-line here. President Bush's August 9, 2001 speech announcing his decision on stem cells is on-line here. The National Institutes of Health maintains information on stem cells and on the stem cell registry here. Advanced Cell Technology is on-line here, and a January 2002 Scientific American article describing their research is on-line here. Gina Kolata with Andrew Pollack, A Breakthrough on Cloning? Perhaps, or Perhaps not Yet, New York Times, November 27, 2001. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Bush denounces cloning and calls for ban, New York Times, November 27, 2001. |
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| DISCLAIMER. The materials contained in this website have been prepared by Stephen Lee ("Author") for informational purposes only and do not contain or constitute legal advice. These materials may not reflect the most current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. Furthermore, this information should in no way be taken as an indication of future results. Reading this website is not intended to create, and your receipt and/or use of the information contained herein, does not constitute an attorney/client relationship. You should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Reproduction, distribution or republication of material contained within this website is prohibited unless the prior permission of Author has been obtained. (C) Copyright 2002, 2003 Stephen Lee. All rights reserved. Newsaic and FootnoteTV are registered service marks of Stephen Lee. Mirror Law and Footnote Comics are service marks of Stephen Lee. More information available here. Comments or suggestions to the Site Editor. |
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