These are excerpts from newspaper editorials from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers:

The Indianapolis Star, on cloning humans (November 27):

A small, privately funded laboratory near Boston claims to have cloned human embryos, sparking a controversy that reaches to the nation's moral foundation.

Hoping to forestall criticism, scientists for Advanced Cell Technology say they have no intention of trying to clone a person and are interested only in treating disease. Yet cloning to create stem cell lines, as the lab claims to have done, requires the destruction of human embryos.

Regardless of their intentions, what ACT scientists have done is morally wrong, as President Bush asserted on Monday. "We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it," he said.

Whatever the substance of the research, it underscores the fact that no federal law currently governs cloning. In August, Bush approved federal funding for research limited to existing stem cell lines. That restriction has been criticised by research proponents who fear that existing cell lines will be insufficient to develop cures for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other crippling diseases. The House legislation has been criticised on the same grounds. It should be noted, however, that despite all of the promises of cures, none has yet been developed.

For now at least, science is taking a different track — the wrong one.

North County Times, Escondido, California, on terrorism trials (November 27):

While there may be legal precedents and plausible reasons that support President Bush's establishment of special military tribunals to try foreigners suspected of terrorist activities, these tribunals need limits, safeguards and more oversight. And we must know when they will end.

Without these guarantees, the United States risks creating a nightmarish, shadow justice system of immense power and no accountability.

Bush's executive order of November 13 orders the creation of military tribunals to try — and possibly execute — suspected terrorists or terrorist conspirators apprehended overseas or in the United States.

It allows the suspension of constitutional rules of evidence and the right to a public trial, and would place suspects under a military system of justice that has yet to be created. Conviction and sentencing could require only a two-thirds vote from the military commission, and appeal would be possible only to the president or the secretary of defence, and only if the president requests it.

The executive order clearly is meant to give US forces a quick way to dispose of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, should they be captured rather than killed. President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have cited as precedent the military trials conducted during the US Civil War and the Second World War.

Such a system could permit the military to conduct secret trials and executions. And that's dangerous. ...