SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 3747 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE

HEADLINE: TESTIMONY OVERSIGNT OF HUMAN CLONING RESEARCH

TESTIMONY-BY: MR. RANDOLPHE H. WICHER , FOUNDER, CLONE RIGHTS UNITED FRONT SPOKESMAN

AFFILIATION: HUMAN CLONING FOUNDATION

BODY:
March 28, 2001 The House Committee On Energy and Commerce W.J. Billy Tauzin, Chairman Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Hearing Issues Raised by Human Cloning Research Mr. Randolphe H. Wicker Founder, Clone Rights United Front Spokesman, Human Cloning Foundation Summary of Testimony Points to be made in testimony: - Cloning is a part of every citizen s reproductive right. - Stem cell research is based on human cloning technology. - The FDA has no authority over the fertility industry. - Cloning is part of every American s right to religious liberty. - The Raelian movement is a legitimate religious movement. - The Raelian movement and its CLONAID have behaved fraudulently. - There is no need for new laws, only enforcement of existing ones. - The dangers of animal cloning are not applicable to human cloning. - The international consortium, which includes Dr. Zavos, is a cautious, professional, experienced team. The regulation of medicine should be left to physicians. Medicine and science are not areas in which unknowledgeable politicians should meddle. Testimony before the house subcommittee on oversight and investigation Thank you for inviting me to testify today. This hearing is being held because everyone knows that human cloning is going to happen. As Dr. Zavos points out: The Genie is out of the bottle . As a human cloning activist during the past four years, I have viewed with alarm the growing public hysteria surrounding this issue. The general public is both highly opinionated and totally misinformed regarding human cloning. Cloning technology is a scientific achievement as significant as the conquering of smallpox, although less important than the discovery of the printing press. Cloning technology has achieved monumental importance due to its central role in stem cell research. Despite all the hand-wringing and declarations against the cloning of human beings by biotech companies, stem cell research cannot be separated from human cloning. The same technology, inserting a cell into an enucleated egg, is central to both. The only difference between the two is that, in stem cell research, a tiny embryo no larger than the dot at the end of this sentence is killed through transforming it into a stem cell culture. In human cloning, the same embryo would be implanted into a woman s womb and allowed to develop into a wanted and loved child. The general public supports stem cell research because it promises to revolutionize medicine. The same public opposes human cloning, which itself is simply a medical cure for the human disability called infertility. The FDA has issued invalid legally unenforceable politically popular feel-good regulations forbidding human cloning in American fertility clinics. Mark Eibert will elaborate on this later. The Government that governs best governs least. The first and most central issue raised by human cloning involves each individual citizen s reproductive rights. The decision by individual citizens about having children and their manner of conception has always been a decision made by a patient in consultation with her or his doctor. Politicians in Washington and politicians in state capitols have no business deciding for American citizens who can bear children and how they can have them. The second critical issue raised by human cloning involves each individual citizen s right to religious belief and practice. I testified to the U S House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Health and Environment, on Thursday, February 12, 1998. I would like to quote a short part of that testimony before tackling the difficult situation currently facing us. I would also like to note that, on this issue, I am speaking for myself and not as an official representative of The Human Cloning Foundation. . . .Religiously based restrictions. . .have no place in the law. They violate religious freedom. Those who believe cloning offers a partial temporary immortality have the right to secure an extended life for their genotype...human cloning does change, at least slightly, the traditionally clear line between life and death. If, even after death, a later born identical twin can be born carrying the originator s genotype into another life, doesn t that somehow deny death its traditional totality? An appropriate phrase might be, Right To Life equals Right to Clone. Already, a Montreal-based group, the Raelians- with which I have no association whatsoever, I might say-are virtually preaching eternal or extended life through cloning. They offer to clone you for $200,000 at their Bahamanian facility, which we have found out doesn t really exist. (See page 111 of February 12, 1998, Testimony to the Subcommittee.) I am submitting to this committee a copy of a press release and invitation sent to me on October 8, 2000 by Nadine Gary on behalf of CLONAID, The First Human Cloning Company, entitled HUMAN CLONING WILL ALLOW GAY COUPLES TO HAVE CHILDREN, I ask that it be included in the official printed record. (See Attachment 1) I am also submitting the opening few paragraphs of an article I wrote and which was published in GayToday, www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com <http://www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com> that gives context and perspective to the CLONAID press release with the same name. (See Attachment 2) I am also submitting two other articles filled with valuable information. The first is an editorial from www.clonerights.com <http://www.clonerights.com> entitled Religious Group Hijacks Human Cloning Movement, January 8, 2001. (See attachment 3) The second is one of many items sent to me to be shared with the press. It is titled A Christian s Letter to CLONAID. (See Attachment 4) Virtually all media, with the exception of Wired Magazine s exceptional cover story by Brian Alexander (February 2001), have ignored the outrageous hype and attempted fraud perpetuated by the Raelian Movement. Apparently, you can get away with almost anything in the United States if you just do it in the name of religion and called yourself a faith-based enterprise. Freedom of speech does not give anyone the right to falsely scream Fire! in a crowded theater. Freedom of religion does not give anyone the right to commit fraud. There is no need for new legislation or regulation on either reproductive freedom or religious belief. There is only a need to prosecute fraud whenever it occurs regardless of the person or group perpetrating it. Finally, the last critical question raised by human cloning technology revolves around who should control and regulate it or whether control and regulation are even possible. It is nearly impossible to draft legislation to outlaw reproductive cloning without harming medical and scientific research in the process. It is mind-boggling that most major media equate declarations by a group of space-cadet wackos about their secret lab where they are claiming that they are actually cloning a human being to the professional, responsible, cautious attempt to perfect cloning technology by two of the world s most renowned and experienced fertility doctors. This is like comparing moon rocks to polished Earthly diamonds. Drs. Zavos and Antinori speak in terms of perfecting techniques, which will make human cloning safe and viable. During a personal meeting less than a week ago, Dr. Zavos pointed out to me that he was not selling anything -compared to the Raelains who tell the media that he who pays the most gets cloned first. Dr. Zavos services are not for sale. I believe that he is as he appears to be-a dedicated warm human being seeking to perfect a narrowly-focused therapy for disabled infertile couples so that they might have children genetically related to themselves. For instance, I would not qualify under Dr. Zavos and Dr. Antinori s criteria. They have set narrow limits and strict guidelines regarding their goals. I would suggest that those interested read a leaflet about the 62-year-old woman who had a healthy child with Dr. Antinori s help, which I will not submit as testimony unless requested by the Committee. The sound bite for today is Cloning is Dangerous Because Animal Experiments Have Shown It to be So. I would suggest that journalists read carefully the detailed screening procedures that will be undertaken before human cloning is even attempted by this professional international consortium. I see a line-up of witnesses ready to testify to this committee. We have Arthur Caplan, whose voice has so crowded out other voices within bioethics that he is recognized as an American secular Pope. In Time Magazine, he said, The short answer to the cloning question is that anybody who clones somebody today should be arrested. Dr. Zavos and I have decided to depose this self-anointed secular Pope by refusing to debate him. See our leaflet Let Other Bioethicists Be Heard, which this Committee may include in its publication if it so chooses. How does one engage in civilized discourse with a man who begins the debate declaring that you should be arrested ? This moral authority who would have us arrested was the first ethicist sued because of his involvement in the unnecessary death of Tucson teenager Jesse Gelsinger. I would suggest that HE should be the one arrested. This is a man who has contributed to the death of a healthy young American citizen. I object to his being allowed to testify to this committee. His morality has been the subject of legal action. I also see that you have another anti-cloning witness, Rudolf Jaenisch, from MIT. I listened carefully to this man s arguments on The Charlie Rose Show. Basically, he argued that Dolly, the sheep conceived through cloning, might be mentally retarded and/or schizophrenic. I would appreciate Rudolf Jaenisch supplying me with an intelligence test or a psychological screening test to see if an apparently normal sheep is or is not schizophrenic. You can t win with these people. When I testified in 1998, the skeptics were asking if we could be sure Dolly wasn t a fraud? After that, the naysayers said Dolly was seven years old when she was born. Well, we now have five successive generations of cloned mice, and their telomeres seem to indicate that cloning actually increases life expectancy. Dolly, if she was six or seven years of age at birth, must be the oldest living sheep in memory to have had offspring just recently. I am not an expert in sheep menopause. I refer you to Rudolf Jaenisch on that issue. And please, get me that intelligence test and that personality evaluation test for sheep so we can evaluate his allegations. Now, we face the great issue of animal deformities that resulted from animal experiments. This is the big issue this week. Well, to begin, let us say two year old cloning technology and/or studies are equivalent to ten year old computer technology. Adults come to this issue (and I might well be one of them) with emotionally-based biases around which they construct intellectual defenses. I would ask any thinking person to consider the facts: the international consortium is working to perfect human cloning technology. Indeed, because it is taking a cautious professional approach, it might well be faced with disastrous results from those crazies seeking money, fame and glory for their prophet. I would point to an extraordinary situation in Brazil (Economist, July 22, 2000) in which science funding is insulated from the whims of politicians and the general public s hysteria. Shouldn t this be the model for the United States of America? I respectfully submit this testimony to this committee and hope that the information contained in it helps shape constructive political and social policy for the new

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