PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Marie Tasy
Public & Legislative Affairs Director
(732) 846-2000
NJRTL RESPONDS TO MCGREEVEY’S DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO GET MEDIA ATTENTION IN WAKE OF SOUTH KOREA CLONING ANNOUNCEMENT
PRESS RELEASE BELIES EARLIER CLAIMS THAT NJ BILL A2840/S1909 DID NOT INCLUDE HUMAN CLONING
The Press Release sent out by pro-cloning NJ Governor Jim McGreevey today asking his HHS Commissioner for help to promote embryonic cloning research within New Jersey’s borders is a brazen admission that the bill McGreevey signed into law on January 4, 2004 (A2840/S1909) DOES indeed allow human cloning and demonstrates his mad zeal to draw media attention and cloning zealots to New Jersey. According to the bill and as stated in the Governor’s Press Release, the law permits research involving the derivation and use of human embryos from any source, including somatic cell nuclear transplantation. This is the same procedure used to clone Dolly the Sheep and the same procedure used by South Korean scientists which made international headlines yesterday reporting they had created human embryos through cloning.
The South Korean experiment used 242 eggs, obtained by superovulating 16 female volunteers (that's 15 eggs per woman on the average). The donor cell and the egg were obtained from the same woman each time so the clones were of the women who had donated the eggs. 213 embryos divided to the 2-cell stage; 30 reached blastocyst stage; only 20 inner cell masses were successfully obtained by killing the embryos; only one embryo stem cell line was successfully established.
There is no reason to exploit women and create human life to destroy it when adult and cord blood stem cells are accessible and are being successfully used to treat human patients. These stem cells are already being used to treat cancers, autoimmune diseases, anemias, immunodeficiencies, bone/cartilage deformities, corneal scarring, Parkinson's, and stroke, and to repair cardiac tissue after heart attack, grow new blood vessels, and grow skin.
The truth has finally come out. Throughout the legislative debate, Governor McGreevey and Democratic leaders repeatedly insisted the law did not authorize human cloning. They owe the people of New Jersey an apology for boldly denying the plain truth that NJRTL and legal and bioethics experts publicly warned about.
Click here to read McGreevey's Press Release