NRL News
Page 28
April 2009
Volume 36
Issue 4

Action Item
NRLC Warns U.S. House Members of
“Bait-and-Switch” on Stem Cell Research Bill

WASHINGTON (April 7, 2009)—NRLC has warned members of the U.S. House of Representatives that they should expect an attempt soon “to ram through the House of Representatives, on short notice, legislation that would authorize federal funding of research on human embryos created specifically to be used in research, and open the door to federal funding of human cloning and human embryo farms.”

The warning came in a letter sent to House members on March 31. That was three weeks after President Obama issued an executive order that nullified earlier orders by former President Bush, which had prevented federal funding of the type of stem cell research that requires the killing of human embryos. (See editorial, page 2.)

Although Obama’s order ensures that federal funds ultimately will flow to support some forms of research that depend on the killing of human embryos, advocates of embryo-destructive research want Congress to act to remove barriers to federal funding of certain forms of experimentation involving human embryos, including human cloning.

The March 31 NRLC letter warned lawmakers to expect that forthcoming legislation dealing with stem cell research will not limit the federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the use of human embryos who are donated by their parents after being “left over” at in vitro fertilization clinics, but will also contain language empowering NIH to use human embryos created especially to be used in research, including embryos created by human cloning.

The NRLC letter explained:

“A legislative ‘bait and switch’ is in the works. We anticipate that the forthcoming ‘embryonic stem cell research’ legislation (1) will give NIH authority broad enough to fund research that uses not only ‘leftover’ human embryos but also created-for-research human embryos, including embryos created by human cloning; and (2) may be coupled with a clone-and-kill provision, which will be labeled as a ‘ban on human cloning’ but which will actually define ‘human cloning’ in a manner that allows the mass creation of human embryos by cloning, for the purpose of using them in research that will kill them. The pro-cloning side hopes to smuggle through these radical policy changes on this authorization legislation, and then follow up by gutting or repealing the Dickey-Wicker provision on the Health and Human Services appropriations bill for FY 2010.”

The NRLC letter concluded:

“Whatever legislation dealing with embryonic stem cell research and human cloning is actually brought before the House will be accurately described in NRLC’s scorecard of key right-to-life roll calls of the 111th Congress. If, as we fear, the forthcoming legislation allows the creation of human embryos by cloning for use in research that will kill them, and grants NIH the authority to fund research that lethally exploits human embryos who were especially created for research, then a vote for that legislation will be accurately described as a vote in favor of federal taxpayer support for human cloning and human embryo farms.”

The entire seven-page NRLC letter—which contained detailed documentation for its warnings—can be viewed on or downloaded from the NRLC website, in PDF format, at http://www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/NRLCHousecloningwarning.pdf

To communicate with those who represent you in Congress on this issue, go to the NRLC Legislative Action Center at http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/home/

You will find there tools that make it easy for you to send an appropriate message to your two U.S. senators and to your U.S. House member, at no cost, urging them to oppose any attempt to pass legislation that would allow federal funding of research that requires the creating and killing of human embryos, whether by human cloning or other methods.