LogFAQs > #954360783

UshiromiyaEva posted...

https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1397743089066852356?s=19

...fact check please.

...What part?

That vote did happen and the amendment failed 48-49 as recorded (party line, 3 abstentions; but as noted it would have needed 60 votes to pass)

If you mean to ask why did it fail, I think the objection to it was that it would restrict some research into organ transplantation. Reading the text of the amendment there is a boilerplate bit that seems to try to carve out an exception there, but reading the transcription of the Senate leads in support/opposition I think this amendment is a direct response to that recent news out of China where they created an embryo that contained human and monkey cells.

Reading an article on that, it was an international team that was looking into new ways to produce organs for people in need of a transplant (by being able to generate replacement organs, possibly using the recipients' own cells to prevent organ rejection.) There has been some research in this by injecting human stem cells into sheep and pigs to try and see if they can create human donor organs but the article says it hasn't been working and this was another attempt at researching it.

There appears to be some ethics debates around it, which seems understandable - there definitely seem to be a number of points where this could go very bad, and the article describes those possibilities, but I think that's where the opposition to the amendment comes from.

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