Ban Human Cloning Right Now
By Judy Norsigian and Stuart Newman,
Boston Globe
| 08. 03. 2001
On Tuesday the US House of Representatives passed a bill that
would ban the cloning of human embryos and thus curtail certain
forms of stem cell research. The two of us, a women's health
activist and a prochoice biologist, provided testimony before
a congressional committee last month in favor of this bill.
Why would political progressives and defenders of reproductive
autonomy advocate restricting what some have characterized as
an area of medicine with great promise, thus finding ourselves
on the same side of the issue as antichoice conservatives? We
believe that any benefits that may result from stem cell research
that utilizes ''clonal embryos,'' that is, genetic duplicates
of existing individuals, would be far outweighed by the threats
to women's health and to our sense of our humanity posed by
creation of such embryos.
Because clonal human embryos could be used for experimental
purposes and ultimately as sources of donor-matched embryo stem
cells, some researchers and biotechnology companies have been
resisting any restrictions on their ability to produce them.
Recently, Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester announced that
it has already...
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