Tim Moore thinks human cloning is a theory

[Vekseid]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/science/earth/04climate.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Kentucky:
âSECTION 1.   A NEW SECTION OF KRS CHAPTER 158 IS CREATED TO READ AS FOLLOWS:
(1)   Teachers, principals, and other school administrators are encouraged to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories being studied.
(2)   After a teacher has taught the content related to scientific theories contained in textbooks and instructional materials included on the approved lists required under KRS 156.433 and 156.435, a teacher may use, as permitted by the local school board, other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner, including but not limited to the study of evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

...I give him credit for realizing there is a difference between abiogenesis (although it is still only a hypothesis) and evolution, though.

The fundamentals of science are not that hard >: (

[DarklingAlice]

I'm just waiting until they also insist we start teaching both sides of the controversy about heliocentrism, germ theory, and all that research the young upstart Antoine Lavoisier is doing to attack the beloved institute of phlogiston theory...

In all seriousness, this makes me despair >_<

[Inkidu]

Have we actually cloned a human yet?

[Vekseid]

Have we actually cloned a human yet?

Embryos have been created, along with a multitude of chimera. They've all been destroyed as far as anyone admits to.

Edit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/17/AR2008011700324.html?hpid=topnews

[DarklingAlice]

We in fact have three entirely different stable methods for cloning your cells (direct reprograming, implantation into an oocyte, and fusion with ES cells), and while only one of them readily leads itself to creating an entirely new embryo (oocyte fusion), the others could do so with little work (and a probably healthier final product). Of course, there is little more than a novelty in creating an entirely new organism. The important thing these three methods do is create farms of pluripotent stem cells carrying your unique genome. Regardless, human cloning moved past the theoretical a long time ago.

EDITED FOR SOURCES:
-Gurdon & Burn, "The first half century of nuclear transplantation." Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2003
-Miller & Ruddle, "Pluripotent teratocarcinoma-thymus somatic cell hybrids." Cell 1976
-Takahashi & Yamanaka, "Induction of pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic and adult fibroblast cultures by defined factors." Cell 2006

[Jude]

I'm more worried about the "advantages and disadvantages" wording than I am about the human cloning is a theory portion.  It makes it sound like they're discussing these theories like they're some sort of plan to be taken.  You shouldn't consider what the advantages and disadvantages are to believing in particular tenets of science; if you do, you've already lost the war against sloppy thinking.  Science is about correct data and analysis, not what you'd like to believe or why it may be useful to believe it.  Too many people already exercise this way of thinking about Science, which causes disastrous consequences for the acceptance of well-established Scientific topics.