Who Says That Cloning Creates a "Human Embryo"?

A national public opinion poll released today (April 22, 2002), conducted by The
Polling Company for Stop Human Cloning, is just the latest evidence that the
American public is strongly opposed to the creation of "human embryos" by
cloning for medical experimentation.  Even when presented with the argument
that such cloning should be allowed "to allow science and research to pursue
cures to diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's,"
respondents rejected cloning of human embryos, 59% to 26%.  Remarkably,
thirty-eight percent (38%) of the total national sample expressed STRONG
disagreement with the arguments in favor of cloning human embryos.

 

This being the case, we can anticipate that the biotechnology industry lobby will
step up its efforts to pretend that cloning (or "somatic cell nuclear transfer") for
"research" will produce something other than a "human embryo."  Therefore,
we are providing below a short sampling of quotes from various scientific
authorities who explicitly confirm that "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (cloning)
will, indeed, produce a "human embryo."  Please note that these authorities
include a National Institutes of Health human embryo research panel, President
Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, and the lead researchers at a
firm now engaged in attempting to clone human embryos.  For more information
on this subject, see www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/Index.html

 

SCIENTISTS ACKNOWLEDGE THAT SO-CALLED
"THERAPEUTIC CLONING" OR "RESEARCH CLONING"
WILL CREATE A "HUMAN EMBRYO"

 

** President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission, in its 1997 report
Cloning Human Beings, explicitly stated:
"The Commission began its discussions fully recognizing that any effort in
humans to transfer a somatic cell nucleus into an enucleated egg involves the

creation of an embryo, with the apparent potential to be implanted in utero and
developed to term."

 

** The National Institutes of Health Human Embryo Research Panel also
assumed in its September 27, 1994 Final Report, that cloning results in
embryos.  In listing research proposals that "should not be funded for the
foreseeable future" because of "serious ethical concerns," the NIH panel
included cloning:
"Such research includes: . . . Studies designed to transplant embryonic or adult
nuclei into an enucleated egg, including nuclear cloning, in order to duplicate a
genome or to increase the number of embryos with the same genotype, with
transfer."

 

** A group of scientists, ethicists, and biotechnology executives advocating
"therapeutic cloning" and use of human embryos for research -- Arthur Caplan
of the University of Pennsylvania, Lee Silver of Princeton University, Ronald
Green of Dartmouth University, and Michael West, Robert Lanza, and Jose
Cibelli of Advanced Cell Technology -- confirmed in the December 27, 2000 issue
of the Journal of the American Medical Association that a human embryo is
created and destroyed through "therapeutic cloning."  They wrote:  CRNT [cell
replacement through nuclear transfer, another term for "therapeutic cloning"]
requires the deliberate creation and disaggregation of a human embryo."  They
also wrote:  " . . . because therapeutic cloning requires the creation and
disaggregation ex utero of blastocyst stage embryos, this technique raises
complex ethical questions."

 

** On September 7, 2000, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on
human cloning. The Parliament's press release defined and commented on
"therapeutic cloning":  ". . . 'Therapeutic cloning,' which involves the creation of
human embryos purely for research purposes, poses an ethical dilemma and
crosses a boundary in research norms."

 

** Lee M. Silver, professor of molecular biology and evolutionary biology at
Princeton University, argues in his 1997 book, Remaking Eden: Cloning and
Beyond in a Brave New World:  "Yet there is nothing synthetic about the cells
used in cloning . . . . The newly created embryo can only develop inside the
womb of a woman in the same way that all embryos and fetuses develop.
Cloned children will be full-fledged human beings, indistinguishable in biological
terms from all other members of the species."

 

** The President and CEO of the biotechnology firm that in 2001  announced its
intentions to clone human embryos for research purposes, Michael D. West,
Ph.D. of Advanced Cell Technology, testified before a Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee on December 2, 1998:  "In this . . . procedure, body cells from a
patient would be fused with an egg cell that has had its nucleus (including the
nuclear DNA) removed. This would theoretically allow the production of a
blastocyst-staged embryo genetically identical to the patient . . . ."

 

** Dr. Ian Wilmut of PPL Technologies, leader of the team that cloned Dolly the
sheep, describes in the Spring 1988 issue of Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare
Ethics how embryos are used in the process now referred to as "therapeutic
cloning":
"One potential use for this technique would be to take cells -- skin cells, for
example -- from a human patient who had a genetic disease . . . . You take this
and get them back to the beginning of their life by nuclear transfer into an oocyte
to produce a new embryo. From that new embryo, you would be able to obtain
relatively simple, undifferentiated cells, which would retain the ability to colonize
the tissues of the patient."

 

** As documented in the American Medical News, February 23, 1998, University
of Colorado human embryologist Jonathan Van Blerkom expressed disbelief
that some deny that human cloning produces an embryo, commenting: "If it's
not an embryo, what is it?"