BROAD-BASED COALITION OPPOSES HUMAN CLONING

Editor's note. The following are excerpts from some of the many groups that held a press conference November 26 in response to the announcement by Advanced Cell Technology that the company had cloned human embryos.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron,
Dean, The Wilberforce Forum

Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology has thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of civilization. ... When with the President's support the House of Representatives voted 267-162 for the Weldon-Stupak bill, it seemed that 2001 would be the year in which we finally said No to human cloning. But September 11 supervened, and in the face of war debate on cloning along with other important matters was suspended.

But Advanced Cell Technology (ACT)...has now taken gross advantage of this de facto moratorium in policy development to try to force a change in the status quo. No longer are we speaking of preventing the cloning of human beings. All of a sudden, humans have been cloned. ACT, under cover of its secret ethics committee, has forged ahead. While we have been focusing on the prosecution of war, they have sought to shift the conversation by a fait accompli. And while we were celebrating Thanksgiving with our families, through a slick PR maneuver Michael West has made their announcement to the world. They must be stopped.

The revulsion of the American people for human cloning is unambiguous.... [T]hose who favor experimental cloning have sought to characterize this as a re-run of the argument over abortion. As leading pro-choicer and biotech legal expert Lori Andrews and I argued in a recent op-ed (Chicago Tribune, August 8, 2001), this is false. A wide coalition has come together that favors an outright ban on all cloning.

Dr. Richard Land, President
Southern Baptist Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission

Advanced Cell Technology's linguistic strategy must be challenged as well. Those who claim that Advanced Cell Technology's goal is not to create "human beings" but "human embryos" are being duplicitous. A human embryo is a very young human being and nothing less. In fact, scientists are cloning those embryos precisely because they are human beings.

Cloning human embryos is clearly not "therapeutic."... [N]o therapeutic benefits accrue to the cloned human being. In fact, the stated purpose of cloning human embryos is to use them for destructive research purposes. The carnage must be stopped now.

As Americans we must now decide whether we are going to be a country that allows the destruction of our tiniest humans for the supposed benefit of older and bigger humans. Unless the answer is a resounding no, the science fiction of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World will have become science fact with all of the barbarous consequences which will follow this downward spiral into a new biotech dark age.

Dr. Brent Blackwelder, President,
Friends of the Earth

The announcement yesterday that human embryos have been cloned by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) should be deeply disturbing for anyone who cares for our planet and its people. Friends of the Earth, has opposed all human cloning because it violates two fundamental principles shared by environmentalists: the precautionary principle, and respect for nature.

Christian Coalition

Dr. Pat Robertson, president and founder of the Christian Coalition of America, said, "The Senate must take action before human embryo farms become commonplace in America." ...

Yesterday, Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, announced that they had successfully created the first cloned human embryo. ...

The United States House of Representatives passed a total ban on human cloning in July by an overwhelming vote of 265 votes, with 63 Democratic members voting for it. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 prevents any person or entity from performing or participating in, or attempting to perform, human cloning. The House of Representatives had to first defeat a substitute amendment by Rep. Jim Greenwood of Pennsylvania. The Greenwood amendment allowed for the cloning of human embryos so long as they are not implanted in a woman's womb where they could grow into a full human being - - this is a clone-and-kill approach.

The Greenwood approach would allow for the mass production of cloned human embryos for manipulation and experimentation for however long the current or future state-of-the-art science can sustain the cloned embryo.

A June 2001 poll conducted by International Communications Research found that 86% of Americans oppose the cloning of human life for purposes of performing destructive research.

Carrie Gordon Earll, Bioethics Analyst for Focus on the Family's Public Policy Division

This is human experimentation, pure and simple. To say that these embryos are "cellular" life, but not human life is to engage in a game of semantics. Every one of us started out as embryos. To redefine life in any other terms puts all life at risk. ...

How many embryos will be created and destroyed before scientists perfect these experimental methods--methods with unknown results? ...

The pace of science is rapidly passing the social bounds of ethics and morality. It is time for public policy to set reasonable limits to advance the preservation of life and protect human dignity.

We urge the Senate to act quickly and pass the Weldon-Brownback Human Cloning Bill, already approved by the House.

Jaydee R. Hanson, Assistant General Secretary, United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society

At its 2000 General Conference The United Methodist Church adopted a resolution calling for a complete and total ban on these activities, which ACT indicates are intended to create embryos for the purpose of destruction. The Church called for a ban on "all human cloning, including the cloning of human embryos." It also called for a ban on "therapeutic, medical, research, and commercial procedures which generate waste embryos."

The resolution adopting these policies expresses the United Methodist conviction that we are "stewards of creation," and "that technology has brought forth great benefit and great harm to creation." United Methodists are also convinced that people are created by God and are more than the sum of our genetic heritage and social environment. We recognize that human knowledge on this issue is incomplete and finite and that it is possible that we will never know all the psychological, cultural, social, or genetic consequences of such procedures.

The United Methodist General Board for Church and Society has endorsed and continues to strongly support immediate passage by the Senate of HR 2505, the House bill received in the Senate and enrolled on August 3rd after an overwhelming, bipartisan victory in the House. We also urge all 8.4 million members of the United Methodist Church in the United States to be in contact with their senators and to urge them to support and vote for that bill.

Jonathan Imbody, Senior Policy Analyst for the Christian Medical Association

With Congress focused on the war on terrorism, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) have taken the opportunity to clone a human being. ACT's ethics board/PR machine hopes to blunt public revulsion by terming the cloned human being--who has already died--an "activated egg."

The spin won't work. A huge majority of Americans remain vehemently opposed to human cloning, and for good reason. ...

Ethically, the purported therapeutic end of "clone and kill" experimentation cannot justify the unethical means. A civilized society upholds the inherent--not utilitarian--value of human life. ...

Rather than using human beings as venture capital for a lucrative biotech industry, we should instead humbly acknowledge our scientific limitations and ethical constraints. To paraphrase the words of Pogo:

"We have met the Creator, and He is not us."

Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, President, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a November 27 statement

The cloning procedure is so dehumanizing that some scientists want to treat the resulting human beings as subhuman, creating them solely so they can destroy them for their cells and tissues.

The fact that U.S. scientists have now created human embryos by cloning should serve as a wake-up call to Congress, and to all of us.

Once again, a technical ability to manipulate and exploit human life is outdistancing society's ability to understand and respond to its frightening implications.