special issue
BROWNBACK/WELDON BILL WILL NOT STOP HUMAN CLONING:
Both houses of Congress are currently considering legislation which is alleged to order a ban on human cloning. However, a careful review of the bills in question indicates that neither bill will do what is claimed because of inexact scientific language.
The Senate Bill, S 790, is sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback. The House version of the same bill, HR 1644, is sponsored by Congressman Dave Weldon
Either bill can be accessed by going to the Library of Congress site and inserting the bill number in the search box.
Members of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission and Prof. Dianne Irving, on behalf of University Faculty for Life, have made efforts to point out the problematic areas in these two bills; concerns that literally make the bills disastrous. But substantive corrections have not been made in either bill as of this writing.
Highlights of concern include (a) absence of language that bans “ALL cloning using human material” and (b) absence of language that includes the accomplishment of cloning by using organisms, cells, DNA and molecules from human beings.
In fact, as human embryologist C. Ward Kischer points out, “molecular cloning” is the foundation of recombinant DNA technology, and yet it is not included in the “ban.”
Further, primordial germ cells are not specifically defined, even though they are not the same as somatic cells, and again we quote Dr. Kischer: “The primordial germ cells are ‘primitive sex cells.’ Somatic cells are cells of the body ‘as distinguished from the germ cells.”
Thus, clearly, exact definitions are required if the so-called cloning ban is truly going to ban human cloning in the United States.
In a letter to Sen. Sam Brownback dated May 4, 2001, Prof. Irving, Prof. Kischer and Father Joseph Howard Jr., director of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission, offered “full support in assisting you in the preparation of legislation which would completely and absolutely prohibit all forms and attempts of human cloning which always involve human embryonic research that is gravely immoral.”
To this date, their guidance has not been utilized, and the two bills mentioned are fraught with error.
Please review the analysis of the bill by Dianne N. Irving, M.A., Ph.D., member of the board of directors of University Faculty for Life.
Please express your concerns to “>Sen. Sam Brownback and Rep. Dave Weldon.
Further information and education on the subject of human cloning can be found by accessing the Cloning index for the American Bioethics Advisory Commission and by reading Moral arguments against human cloning.
Please pray for all of those politicians currently involved in efforts to truly ban human cloning.