FASEBnews

April 10, 2002

Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
Office of Public Affairs • 9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, Md. 20814-3998 • www.faseb.org

Contact: Pat White
(202) 543-1155

For Immediate Release:
April 10, 2002

FASEB Opposes Reproductive Human Cloning
But Urges Senate Not to Criminalize Biomedical Research

Today, President Bush and others are assembling in Washington, DC to rally support for legislation to ban human reproductive cloning.  This bill, proposed by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), will not only ban human reproductive cloning but it will also criminalize promising scientific research that offers hope to millions of individuals and their families who suffer from life-threatening diseases.

 

“The scientific community urges the Senate to ban human reproductive cloning, but views the criminalization of  research as short-sighted,” said FASEB President Robert R. Rich.  “Our nation’s best minds should be allowed to explore the scientific and medical promise of stem cell research.”    

 

The Brownback bill would prohibit nuclear transplantation to produce stem cells.  Nuclear transplantation, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer or “therapeutic cloning” has opened up the promising new field of regenerative medicine.  This laboratory technique removes the nucleus of an egg cell and replaces it with the nucleus of an adult body cell to produce stem cells for research and exciting new therapies.  Such techniques could generate large numbers of cells capable of differentiating into many different cell types, such as neurons to treat Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, pancreatic islet cells to treat diabetes, or cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) to repair a damaged heart.  Nuclear transfer also makes it possible to create cells that are genetically identical to a patient, eliminating the risk that transplanted cells would be subject to immune rejection.  The potential for treating human disease in this exciting area of regenerative medicine is enormous. 

 

FASEB is the nation’s largest coalition of biomedical research scientists representing 21 scientific societies with more than 60,000 members. 

 

 

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