Check out Jeffrey Rosen's piece in Sunday's New York Times on neuroscience's possible legal impacts. Here's an excerpt:

"Proponents of neurolaw say that neuroscientific evidence will have a large impact not only on questions of guilt and punishment but also on the detection of lies and hidden bias, and on the prediction of future criminal behavior. At the same time, skeptics fear that the use of brain-scanning technology as a kind of super mind-reading device will threaten our privacy and mental freedom, leading some to call for the legal system to respond with a new concept of 'cognitive liberty.' [Also to consider,] should courts be in the business of deciding when to mitigate someone's criminal responsibility because his brain functions improperly, whether because of age, in-born defects or trauma? As we learn more about criminals' brains, will we have to redefine our most basic ideas of justice?"

Are researchers justified in asking women to provide their eggs for research cloning? If they are, or if the work is going to proceed in any case, how can the risks of egg retrieval be minimized? And what about money - should women be paid for their time and risk-taking, or would payments inappropriately entice those most in need of quick cash?

For many people - both supporters of research cloning and skeptics of it - these are important and complex questions, worthy of careful attention and deliberation.

Others, including British cloning researcher Professor Alison Murdoch, are apparently impatient with all the dilly-dallying.

Murdoch leads one of two British teams to which the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has granted a license for efforts to clone human embryos. She also directs a fertility clinic.

The HFEA has recently approved a plan, at Murdoch's request, that allows clinics to offer half-price treatments to women who agree to donate half the eggs they produce for cloning research. An advantage of this arrangement is that eggs for research would come from women who have already decided to undergo egg retrieval procedures for fertility purposes, so that no additional woman would be put at risk. It does, however, constitute an end run of sorts around the prohibition on compensating women who provide eggs for research beyond reimbursing their direct expenses.

It also raises questions about conflicting priorities on the part of those procuring the eggs. The woman seeking treatment wants to get pregnant. The cloning researcher wants raw materials. Both need eggs. The potential for problems arising from divided loyalties is great when, as in Murdoch's case, the party responsible for the well-being of the woman is also the high-profile head of a research team striving to win what some scientists call the "cloning race."

Murdoch's dual role has previously been called into question - from another angle - by her former research colleague Dr. Mirodrag Stojkovic (with whom she is pictured here). In 2005, Murdoch announced at a press conference that she and her team had successfully cloned a human embryo, though they failed to derive stem cells from it. Stojkovic, who was not at the press conference, accused her of arranging it without telling him or other team members, and of breaching good scientific practice by publicizing the work before it had undergone peer review. Stojkovic also said Murdoch was trying to monopolize credit for the team's work.

According to the UK Times, "Although Murdoch is widely described as the leader of Britain's cloning team, Stojkovic insists her contribution was limited to providing human eggs from her fertility clinic for the experiments…`The laboratory scientists do not need someone who has been doing nothing in the laboratory and who knows nothing about the work, to represent them,'" he said.

Stojkovic later said the dispute was part of the reason he quit his position at the University of Newcastle and moved to a research center in Spain.

So Stojkovic is gone, Murdoch is in charge of both egg procurement and cloning research, and the HFEA has given her the green light to divert eggs retrieved for fertility treatments to her research effort.

But Murdoch is not content. According to news accounts, she told a meeting of British stem cell scientists earlier this month that "excessive bureaucracy imposed by the [HFEA] was prohibiting development in stem cell research and threatening Britain's position as a world leader in the field." She complained about red tape and said that the government is putting "barbed wire" around her research.

A question for Professor Murdoch and other cloning researchers: What comes first, the woman or her eggs?

The Washington Times has published a four-part investigative series (1, 2, 3, 4) on India's booming business in prenatal ultrasound examinations and sex-selective abortion to eliminate girls. The final article, titled "GE machines used to break law," reports on the scores of thousands of specially designed low-cost ultrasound machines that have been manufactured by General Electric and the Bangalore software company Wipro, and sold with the help of cheap credit offered by GE Capital Services India.

The Washington Times is the right-wing DC newspaper founded by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon. According to Wikipedia, the paper has lost money every year since it was founded in 1982, amounting to several billion dollars. Perhaps the cost of an investigative report - an endangered species at many newspapers - pales in the context of that much red ink.

On the other hand, a quick Google search reveals what WT did not: In 2006, Fortune magazine named GE number one on its Annual List of Most Admired Companies.

Public funding of stem cell research in Illinois - already the practice due to executive orders - is about to become enshrined in law. The identical bills which have passed both the House and Senate are, in a number of ways, improvements over those seen in other states, such as California and Connecticut. (I hope that the work of public interest groups to highlight the flaws of these programs played a role in these provisions.) But they do contain significant flaws.

First, the good news:

* The Illinois Regenerative Medicine Institute would be publicly accountable. Its new seven-person board, appointed by the governor, would effectively report to the Department of Public Health, which would establish most of the policies.
* Only nonprofit institutions could receive grants, although corporate representatives are permitted on the board.
* The bills do not set aside, and consequently lock-up, any funds. They merely establish a granting structure. Stem cell research must compete with a complete array of other budget priorities on a level playing field.
* They put various forms of stem cell research on equal footing.
* The bills contain tough provisions to avoid conflict-of-interest and require public disclosure of personal financial interests. This applies to members of the governing board as well as any advisory committees. (California, take note.) What's more, the governing board can't include employees of any institution that is eligible for grants.
* Provisions for transparency include disclosure of the identities of all applicants of funding - not just the grantees. California, take note again.
* Reproductive cloning is banned and criminalized as a class 1 felony.

The most glaring shortcoming of the bills is one of omission: There is no mention of intellectual property provisions. Perhaps there is an existing statute governing state-funded research. If not, who will own the patents? Will the state receive a portion of profitable discoveries made with tax dollars? Will the state's health care program be forced to pay high prices for such therapies?

Furthermore, the bill prohibits neither payments to women to provide eggs for cloning-based stem cell research, nor the reselling of their eggs. But it does call on the governing board to establish research standards "in consultation with... experts such as the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Institute of Medicine." I would hope, if not expect, that such guidelines would be enforceable - not voluntary - and prohibit compensation for egg providers.

Finally, one clause jumped out at me:

All Institute information concerning medical research shall be confidential and privileged and not subject to disclosure to any person other than Institute personnel.

This is broadly worded, and leaves room for abuse. It should be tightened to cover only justifiable secrets such as research subjects' private details and proprietary trade secrets.