In his May 29 letter responding to Burt,
MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach
not only reaffirmed the accuracy of all
MCCL's statements regarding the
University of Minnesota's pursuit of
human cloning and its embryo-destructive
research, but also added, "The
University's letter only serves to
highlight its own dishonest portrayal of
its efforts to clone human beings." A
little history is in order.
MCCL's news releases had talked about
legislation to ban taxpayer funding of
human cloning at the University. In an
April 21 letter to a state Senator, Dr.
Frank Cerra, the University's senior
vice president for health sciences,
specifically complained that "This bill
will stifle important and ongoing
University of Minnesota research"
(emphasis added). Less than two months
later, Cerra testified that "therapeutic
cloning…is really at the core of much of
the work we do," adding, "Therapeutic
cloning has great value."
MCCL argued "the only conclusion is that
the Stem Cell Institute is engaged in
human cloning, confirming the truth of
MCCL' s statements."
Burt's May 26 letter resorts to the
familiar disingenuous distinction long
employed by cloning proponents. She
wrote, "To be very clear, the University
of Minnesota is opposed to
reproductive cloning and any cloning
designed to produce a new human being"
(emphasis added).
Note that Burt carefully avoided any
mention of so-called therapeutic cloning
or the fact that both therapeutic and
reproductive cloning use the same
technique--somatic cell nuclear transfer
or SCNT (which the
National Institutes of Health
has called "the scientific term for
cloning")--to produce a new human
organism.
Burt further complained that MCCL's
"disinformation campaign jeopardizes
therapeutic research which is life
saving and necessary to identify
treatments and cures in diabetes,
cancer, heart disease and more." But
Fischbach easily rebuts the charge.
"[Y]ou ought to know that the medical
successes that you tout in your letter,
such as bone marrow transplants, are the
result of non-embryonic forms of stem
cell research." He added, "MCCL
encourages the University and other
institutions to focus their resources on
work with adult and induced pluripotent
stem cells rather than on scientifically
problematic and increasingly unnecessary
embryonic research that requires the
unethical taking of human life."
