NRL News
Page 17
June 2009
Volume 36
Issue 6

MCCL Rebuts University Charge,
Calls on Stem Cell Institute to Cease Human Cloning
By Dave Andrusko

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) and the University of Minnesota have exchanged pointed letters over charges made by Wendy Burt, Academic Health Center director of public and community affairs at the university. Burt alleged that recent MCCL news releases were “absolutely false” in stating that the university’s “Stem Cell Institute is believed to be pursuing human cloning for research purposes.”

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 “[t]his 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 that “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).

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 id6951304 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.”