SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 629 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE

SUBCOMMITTEE: HEALTH

HEADLINE: PROHIBITON ON HUMAN CLONING

TESTIMONY-BY: JUDY NORSIGIAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

AFFILIATION: BOSTON'S WOMEN BOOK COLLECTIVE;

BODY:
June 20, 2001

Prepared Witness Testimony The Committee on Energy and Commerce W.J. "Billy Tauzin" Chairman

H.R. 1644, Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001, and H.R.____, Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 Subcommittee on Health

Ms. Judy Norsignian Executive Directo Boston Women's Health Book Collective c/o Boston University School of Public Health

I am Judy Norsigian, the Executive Director of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (BWHBC), co-authors of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the most widely read book about women's health and sexuality since it was first published in 1970. There are now 4 1/2 million copies in print in 20 languages around the world, with 10 more editions on the way. The 7th and latest English language edition in the United States is entitled Our Bodies, Ourselves for the New Century. The Spanish language cultural adaptation - Nuestros Cuerpos, Nuestras Vidas - was published last year. Our organization has also produced similar books for teenagers and for older women and sustains a variety of advocacy and activist efforts related to the health of women, families and communities. We have a long track record in the field of reproductive rights and reproductive health. The BWHBC joins many other national and international organizations in calling for a universal ban on human reproductive cloning. To allow the creation of human clones would open the door to treating our children like manufactured objects. It would violate deeply and widely held values concerning human individuality and dignity. It would pave the way for unprecedented new forms of eugenics. And it would serve no justifiable purpose.

Supporters of women's health and reproductive rights have particular reasons to oppose human cloning. Those who encourage human cloning appear oblivious to the enormous risks to women and children's health that human cloning would pose. There is no way that human cloning could be developed without, in effect, mass experimentation on human beings women and children of a sort that has been outlawed since the formulation of the Nuremberg Principles following World War II.

Further, cloning advocates are seeking to appropriate the language of reproductive rights to support their case. This is a travesty. There is an immense difference between seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy and seeking to create a genetic duplicate human being. Our opposition to human cloning in no way diminishes our support for a woman's right to safe, legal, and accessible contraception and abortion services.

For these reasons, we call for a permanent ban on the creation of cloned human beings.

Some medical researchers support the creation of clonal human embryos for experimental purposes leading to potential therapeutic applications. While we do not in principle oppose the use of human embryos for valid medical research, including their use to generate embryonic stem cells, we do oppose the creation of clonal human embryos. To allow this procedure would make it all but impossible to enforce the ban on the creation of fully formed human clones. Further, it would open the door to other, more profound forms of human genetic manipulation. For these reasons, we call for at least a moratorium on the creation of clonal human embryos for research purposes. During such a period the many non-controversial alternatives to using clonal embryos for these purposes could be explored.

More than thirty countries worldwide have already banned the creation of human clones and/or imposed constraints on the creation of clonal embryos. It is time for the United States to do likewise. The vast majority of women's health and reproductive rights advocates want this to happen. The future of our common humanity is at stake.



LOAD-DATE: June 21, 2001