Three Illinois public policy organizations held a press conference today to protest last week’s unilateral hold-up by state Rep. William Delgado (D- 3rd District, Chicago) of House Bill 4156, which would halt taxpayer funding of human cloning in Illinois and regulate documented gross human cloning and embryonic experimentations.
HB4156 has 51 cosponsors and enough confirmed votes to pass on the Floor of the Illinois House, yet Rep. Delgado refused to allow the Human Services Committee he chairs to even vote on it.
HB4156 with its proposed amendment would not only have stopped Gov. Blagojevich with his plan – already in place – to force taxpayer funding of human cloning experimentation, it would have provided controls on this unregulated research that exploits women and destroys human life.
“The citizens of Illinois do not approve of the research House leadership is asking them to fund,” stated Joe Carter, Director of Communications for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity.
“For example, in 2003, Chicago researcher Norbert Gleicher announced he had inserted human male cells into female embryos and allowed the ‘she-males’ to live six days before destroying them,” continued Carter. “In 2005, researchers at California’s Salk Institute announced they had successfully implanted human cells into mouse brains. Because human eggs are a scare resource, researchers have even begun inserting human cells into rabbit and cow eggs in order to conduct cloning research.”
Stated Jill Stanek, Pro-Life Coordinator for Concerned Women for America of Illinois, “Thanks to Rep. Delgado and the House leadership, unethical research like this will not only go on unfettered, but the people of Illinois may have to pay for it.
“While Delgado said he opposed human cloning, he still refused to let his committee vote on HB4156,” said Stanek. “So we appealed to House Leader Rep. Michael Madigan and Rules Committee Chairwoman Barbara Flynn-Currie. But they refused to move the bill to another committee, where it might have received a fair hearing.”
“Likewise, Gov. Blagojevich’s actions also betrayed his words,” said Fran Eaton of Eagle Forum of Illinois. “He also stated his opposition to human cloning. Yet in last July’s Executive Order #6, he sanctioned taxpayer funding for ‘somatic cell nuclear transfer,’ the technique used to produce a cloned human embryo.”
The groups call on liberal General Assembly Democrat leaders to yield to the will of the People of Illinois and ban taxpayer funding of human cloning and regulate its research.
An SCNT "cloned human embryo" is an unfertilized egg and a person's own DNA, not a human life or person. Nothing is actually cloned.
This blastocyst/embryo is not going to become a clone of the person who donated the DNA because all legislation bans it and the cloning of human beings has not been done nor is it seen as desirable.
The purpose of this research is to learn etiology of diseases and hopefully lead to better treatments and cures. Opposing this research is the real crime against humanity.
You mean they take DNA from one person and inject it into an egg, in the hopes that it will become a blastocyst? No, this isn't human cloning. Human cloning is something completely different, involving space aliens. Just ask anyone in the unreality-based community.
I love how you say that it's OK to do SCNT, just as long as you kill the new human life which it creates before it has a chance to grow too large or complex.
No, wait, you didn't say that it's OK to do SCNT. You said that NOT doing SCNT is a crime against humanity! Well then, it's a good thing those Nazis experimented on the Jews that they were just going to kill anyway. Not doing so would have been a real sin.
Rayilyn, 2:38p: According to the United Nations, the National Academy of Sciences, the Genetic Science Learning Center, the President’s Council on Bioethics, and even Wikipedia, to name just some, the definition of human cloning is “somatic cell nuclear transfer.”
Furthermore, Rayilyn, word parsing does not stop the fact that "somatic cell nuclear transfer" exploits women. The procedure is contingent upon the use of unfertilized human eggs, which can obviously only be harvested from women.
Eighty-four countries understood this potential, which is why they passed the United Nations Declaration to Ban All Forms of Human Cloning in March 2005.
The United Nations was rightly concerned that cloning, I mean, "somatic cell nuclear transfer," would create an international market for eggs, and researchers would exploit disadvantage women.
The recent collapse of South Korea’s cloning center was precipitated in part by revelations that female junior research team members had been coerced into "donating" their eggs for experimentation. It was also precipitated because of lies in studies the team published that only hundreds of eggs were used to conduct experiments when in fact thousands were needed.
Jill, some women have their own eggs to use. I don't, I had ovarian cancer. I suppose you would prohibit a woman fom using her own eggs and DNA to cure herself. Certainly you wouldn't let my niece help me out.
I tried to make the point that cell replacement is not necessarily the goal of SCNT but etiology of disease. Treatments might not require eggs at all, but we will never know if you have your way.
What this whole argument comes down to is whether you think a blastocyst of microscopic undifferentiated cells is a person or not. I don't and never will and think when people see what we are talking about you will have a hard sell. It is a no-brainer.
I think your real issue is abortion and since it is legal you want to undermine it any way you can at the expense of millions of actual living suffering people wih your concern for potential people. That is a burden you chose to ignore.
Thank you so much for your kindness.