Human Cloning Begins At Harvard

Harvard University just approved plans to begin human cloning for bio-medical research.  California Universities are soon to follow.  Harvard is sold on embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).  The only way to get embryonic stem cells (ESCs) is to DESTROY an embryonic human being. 

Here are a few things to know.

1. What's the connection with ESCR and Cloning?  ESCR supporters believe cloning is necessary to overcome rejection of ESCs.  There are not enough "LEFTOVER" embryos in fertility labs to create matches for the 100+ million sufferers who could benefit from this research.  Cloning is seen as the way to create perfect matches. 

2. Cloning is legal for any purpose in the United States.  There is nothing in US law to prevent anyone from cloning another person for reproductive purposes or to strip mine the clone for his or her stem cells for therapy.  

3. Cloning is very difficult and inefficient.  It took over 276 attempts to clone Dolly the sheep.  Like all of the other animal clones, she was genetically defective.   I get it-grow an embryo with defective genes and transplant them.  That’s good medicine!  

4. Cloning will exploit women.  Cloning occurs by fusing or inserting cells of the donor with or into the hollowed out unfertilized egg from a woman.   An electrical charge is applied and boom, a new human clone comes into existence.  Because it is so inefficient it is going to require massive numbers of eggs from women.  The surgical procedure for doing so is risky and at least one woman in Britain died.  What will happen to the millions of women donors on surgical assembly lines in nations with second rate medical care?  That’s why some abortion supporting feminists are opposing cloning and embryonic stem cell research. 

5. ESCR has not provided a single cure-not even in animal studies after all of these years.  It is so DANGEROUS in animal studies that there are no human trials.  It could be decades before we see any results.  At the same time, other stem cell research, which uses non-embryonic stem cells-usually called “adult” stem cells-has produced more than 65 results.  There are well over 300 human trials in progress.

6. Adult stem cells have overcome all of the perceived advantages of embryonic stem cells and are proving themselves to be superior.  They do not pose rejection problems and they appear to be easier to control than ESCs, which have a high rate of teratomas/tumor formation.

I oppose human cloning because it kills a human being.  It assaults human dignity by treating human beings as commodities to be manufactured, mined and marketed.  Others oppose it because it will exploit women and there are superior result producing alternatives.  For more info about these results see our guest on Voice For Life, Dr. David Prentice’s presentation to the Congress.  Visit the Nevada LIFE cloning page for our position and links to other sites.