Wednesday February 5, 2003
PROPOSED U.S. LEGISLATION WOULD ALLOW HUMAN EMBRYO FARMS
Fetus Farming on the horizon with NJ legislation
WASHINGTON, February 5, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A bill being introduced today in Congress, falsely labelled as a bill to make "human cloning a crime," actually "would give a green light to the establishment of human embryo farms," said a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). The bill, proposed by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), and others, would permit the cloning of human embryos, and reportedly make it a crime to keep any such embryo alive past two weeks of age.
"This bill doesn't really ban any human cloning -- it bans human clone survival, which is a radically different thing," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. "This bill would give a green light to the establishment of what President Bush has called human embryo farms. It is incorrect to say that we think it does not go far enough -- rather, it is a step in the wrong direction. It does not represent common ground, and it will not become law."
When similar legislation was proposed last year by the same group of senators, it was criticized as unworkable by the Justice Department. Moreover, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson sent a letter to Senator Brownback warning that such a bill would face a presidential veto. Thompson wrote, "The President does not believe that 'reproductive' and 'research' cloning should be treated differently, given that they both require the creation, exploitation, and destruction of human embryos . . . the Administration could not support any measure that purported to ban 'reproductive' cloning while authorizing 'research' cloning, and I would recommend to the President that he veto such a bill."
See www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/ThompsontoBrownback.pdf
Last year, researchers reported harvesting tissue from cloned cows at six and eight weeks of fetal development, and from cloned mice at the newborn stage, in what were widely reported as breakthroughs for so-called "therapeutic cloning." Already, some policymakers are opening the door to "fetus farming" with human clones. The New Jersey legislature appears to be close to giving final approval to a bill that would permit cloned humans to be grown through any stage of fetal development, or even to birth, to obtain tissues for transplantation, as long as they are not kept alive past the "newborn" stage. (SB 1909, as amended) Four members of the President's Council on Bioethics wrote to Gov. James McGreevey to warn about the bill's radical implications.
See www.nationalreview.com/document/document020303c.asp
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