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Press Release

7/11/02 - Bioethics Council Calls for Immediate Halt on Human Cloning; Weldon Questions Moratorium

Washington, DC -- Representative Dave Weldon, M.D., a practicing internist and author of the human cloning ban that passed in the House by over a 100 vote margin, released the following statement regarding the human cloning report issued by the Presidents Council on Bioethics. The Council report recommends that President Bush support a legislative ban on cloning human babies, called reproductive cloning, and it recommended a 4-year moratorium on creating cloned embryos for the purpose of research, called experimental research or therapeutic cloning.

 I agree with the Council majority in so far as they recommend an immediate halt to all human cloning, and it is clear that even the Council minoritywho supports research cloningactually opposes the Kennedy/Feinstein bill because it lacks any ethical regulations. I am also encouraged that the entire Council explicitly rejected the misleading attempt to call cloning by some other name. The Councils decision makes clear that those who would try to skirt the grave moral issues of research cloning with a linguistic slight of hand is utterly spurious. Cloning is cloning, regardless of the purpose.

At the same time, I am disappointed that the Council majority has recommended sun-setting in four years a ban on cloning for research purposes without requiring Congress to act. This policy misleadingly implies that there are two types of human cloning depending on the intentions of researchers, whether the ultimate intent is to create a cloned baby or whether it is to dismember the cloned human embryo. This is unacceptable. It cant be immoral today, but moral four years from now.

All human cloning is reproductive cloning. All human cloning begins with the creation of the cloned embryo, regardless of intentions. We must be clear about whats at stake here: whether to draw a clear moral line that says cloning humans for experimental research and then killing them is unacceptable behavior for a civilized nation. As such, a moratorium on research would actually legalize human cloning within four years, and thus undermine human dignity, concluded Weldon.

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