For immediate release: 

Friday, April 17, 2009

For more information:

Federal Legislation Department
(202) 626-8820; legfederal@aol.com
Communications Department
(202) 626-8825; mediarelations@nrlc.org 
 

National Right to Life says the Obama Administration is pushing step-by-step the creation and harvesting of human embryos for research

WASHINGTON – The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), representing the affiliated right-to-life organizations in all 50 states, issued the following statement regarding guidelines on embryonic stem cell research, published today by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  The statement may be attributed to NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. 

The Obama Administration today slides further down the slippery slope of exploiting non-consenting members of the human species -- human embryos.

Some may characterize the guidelines issued today as narrowly crafted, since NIH will not initially fund research involving human embryos who were created specifically to be used in research.  This seeming restraint is part of an incremental strategy intended to desensitize the public to the concept of killing human embryos for research purposes.  Even today, NIH officials assert that they can go much further when they choose to.  NIH today badly understates the scope of the longstanding law that actually prohibits funding of research that creates or harms human embryos, including all creation of human embryos by cloning.

We believe that today's action may be part of a "bait-and-switch" strategy, under which Democratic leaders in Congress will suddenly bring up new legislation that they will claim codifies today's NIH action, but which will in fact authorize further expansions involving the deliberate creation of human embryos for use in research, by human cloning and other methods.  NRLC laid out the evidences that such a "bait and switch" strategy is in the works in a detailed letter sent to members of Congress on March 31, which is posted on our website at: http://www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/NRLCHousecloningwarning.pdf.

It is noteworthy that in its proposed guidelines today, NIH characterizes the Dickey-Wicker Amendment as prohibiting federal funding of the "derivation" of stem cells from human embryos, the term "derivation" being a euphemism for "killing a human embryo by cutting out his or her stem cells."  It is true that federal funding of such activity is prohibited by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, but the prohibition in the Dickey-Wicker Amendment is much broader:  It prohibits federal funding of creating human embryos by any method, explicitly including human cloning, or any "research in which" human embryos are harmed in any way.

The actual language of the Dickey-Wicker law follows:

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SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for (1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; OR (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)).  (b) For purposes of this section, the term "human embryo or embryos" includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.

[end of text of the law]

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The National Right to Life Committee is the nation's largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 local chapters nationwide.  National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those threatened by abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and assisted suicide. 

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