74 Therapeutic Cloning I saw in my mind the swelling imbalance in blood chemistry, the millions of cells in her body screaming for help, her pre- cious mind being turned to chaos by anoxia. Finally her heart cells – facing, for the first time since the origin of life on earth, the abyss of death – gave up their valiant defense of life and fell into chaos and arrhythmia. They had accomplished their appointed goal; they had successfully passed on their genome into  a  son.  Minutes  passed.  As  successful  as  my  mother’s life might have been in completing the job of reproduction, I found the strategy of the life cycle completely unacceptable. I stood there, hating death. I  walked  to  my  car  later  that  night,  wandering  aimlessly into the darkness. I had no itinerary, no plane reservations; I felt like driving randomly into the night. I looked overhead in that warm summer sky and stared at a bright but waning moon and I recognized its significance. The moon has for millennia been a source of encouragement to mankind facing the bleak realities of death and of loss. In 14 days, it is cut into pieces like the death of Osiris, but it always regenerates in an eternal fugue. In the years to come, science and medicine will deliver on the promise of regenerative medicine. It is inevitable that the immortal cell, which can do so much to alleviate human suf- fering, will find its way to the hospital bed. But when these new therapies are available for our loved ones entirely depends on how we as a society grapple with these important issues. The United States has a proud history of leading the world in boldly exploring new technologies. We did not hesitate to apply our best minds in an effort to enable a man to walk on the moon. We were not paralyzed by the fear that we would anger the gods by reaching for the heavens. But a far greater challenge stands before us now. We have been given two tal- ents of gold. The first, the root of immortal human life, is the human embryonic stem cell. The second is nuclear transfer