Posted on 12/20/2003 8:36:33 AM PST by Gopher Broke
New Jersey's controversial stem-cell research law, passed earlier this week by the state Assembly is likely to become state law tomorrow, say pro-life opponents of what they have long nicknamed the "clone-and-kill bill."
Although Liz Ortiz of the governor's office said she had "no information" as to when Gov. James McGreevey would sign the bill, New Jersey Right to Life Public and Legislative Affairs Director Marie Tasy said an inside source alerted her that the governor plans to sign it into law Sunday. The bill, S1909/A2840, would become effective immediately.
In a telephone interview, Tasy said the global and national implications of the bill are "horrific." In a press statement, she wrote, "Under this bill, human lives will be treated as a commodity, creating classes of lesser humans to be sacrificed. …"
Last Monday, the Assembly passed the bill that would make that state the second in the nation, after California, to permit embryonic stem-cell research.
Shortly after George W. Bush became president, Congress restricted research on cells taken from embryos since 2001, while allowing research on certain previously harvested "strains" of cells. Under the new law, New Jersey's pharmaceutical biomedical firms could experiment on live cells from embryos discarded at fertility clinics.
Pro-life groups and Catholic leaders campaigned to block the bill – even declaring success last February when the New Jersey Assembly voted at the last minute to kill the bill – after the Senate had passed it and the governor said he'd sign it. This time, however, the bill has passed both houses and it awaits the governor's promised signature.
Stem cells, which are created in the first few days of life, are "undifferentiated" and can therefore be induced artificially to grow into different types of tissue, prompting researchers to believe they hold the key to the creation of new treatments for diseases such as multiple sclerosis and cancer.
Since stem cells can be harvested only by destroying a fetus shortly after fertilization, such legislation has been fiercely opposed by anti-abortion groups.
Widespread opposition
Describing the effect of the legislation as "breathtaking, unprecedented and widely regarded as morally disastrous," Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley says "the legislation authorizes commercial traffic in the body parts of human beings 'cultivated' (the bill's word) up to the moment of birth." Bradley added, "Since the only way to 'cultivate' embryos is by implantation in a woman's womb, the bills expressly authorize payment for 'implantation' and 'transplantation' of embryos."
Four members of the President's Council on Bioethics wrote McGreevey expressing "grave concern" about the bill, when it was being considered by the state Senate. Council members William Hurlbut of Stanford University, Robert George of Princeton, Alfonso Gomez of Georgetown University, and Gilbert Meilanander of Valpuaiso University, all medical doctors, signed the letter:
Please pause to consider whose cadaver the tissue is to be derived from. It is … a human being – who would be brought into being by cloning and, presumably, implanted and permitted to develop to the desired stage of physical maturation for the purpose of being killed for the harvesting of his or her tissues. And in a dramatic appeal late yesterday, three of New Jersey's U.S. representatives – Chris Smith, Mike Ferguson and Scott Garrett – implored their state's governor to reconsider signing the bill:
We urge the governor take a step back from a historic and troubling threshold that ought not be crossed lightly. The bill being considered for signature on McGreevey's desk would not only allow the cloning of human beings for research purposes, but would also allow cloned human embryos to be implanted into a woman's womb, allow the cloned human to develop to the fetal stage, and then use this human child for research where he or she could be killed for their "spare parts."
This legislation will launch New Jersey blindly into the vanguard of terrible human-rights violations and grisly human experimentation. We are literally facing the prospect of creating a human clone, and implanting this cloned baby into a woman's womb. Once this happens, nothing can stop the world's first human clone from being born and starting a horrible new era of human history.
As advocates for increased funding to support life-affirming biomedical research, we fully understand the drive to cure debilitating diseases and to improve health care for those who are suffering. But allowing human fetus farms for research is not an ethical or practical solution.
Rather, the priority should be to fund the most ethical and the most promising avenues of research – adult stem cell research – which could find cures that will not exploit human life and incite controversy. Each dollar that goes toward projects that clone humans and destroy human life at its earliest stage of development takes away from ethical research that is moving forward at an incredible rate and that does not have the ethical baggage attached to human cloning.
Furthermore, proponents of human cloning used a lame duck session to jam through the most extreme legislation in the country. We commend the significant number of Assembly members who voted against this deeply flawed bill, and we urge the governor to step back from the brink of a wholly preventable disaster.
The use of adult stem cell and cord blood stem cell research is ethical and successful. Adult stem cells are already being used to successfully treat humans suffering from cancers, autoimmune diseases, anemias, immunodeficiencies, bone and cartilage deformities, corneal scarring, stroke, heart damage, Parkinson's, and skin damage.
Adult and cord blood stem cells are able to generate virtually all tissue types; they can multiply almost indefinitely to be used for treatment; they have proven successful in laboratory culture and in animal models; and they have the ability to find and repair damage. Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells do not cause tumors, and they do not have the problem of transplant rejection.
Meanwhile, Colleen Parro, director of the Republican National Coalition for Life, and other pro-life leaders are urging constituents to express their concern over passage of the bill to the governor's office.
The merchants of life and death, being involved in another life/death market, seems par for the course.
If we could just put some of that yellow tape all the way around New Jersey.....
Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley says "the legislation authorizes commercial traffic in the body parts of human beings 'cultivated' (the bill's word) up to the moment of birth." Bradley added, "Since the only way to 'cultivate' embryos is by implantation in a woman's womb, the bills expressly authorize payment for 'implantation' and 'transplantation' of embryos."
Bull. Embryos are routinely "cultivated" to the blastocyst stage in a petri dish.
It is … a human being – who would be brought into being by cloning and, presumably, implanted and permitted to develop to the desired stage of physical maturation for the purpose of being killed for the harvesting of his or her tissues. . . . would also allow cloned human embryos to be implanted into a woman's womb, allow the cloned human to develop to the fetal stage, and then use this human child for research where he or she could be killed for their "spare parts."
More bull. No researcher anywhere has proposed doing anything of the sort, or even pursuing research which would lead to this. The whole point is to get stem cells to differentiate so that a particular organ or cell type can be grown in a lab, NOT so that a whole baby can be grown and then dissected for parts, and certainly not so anything can be grown in a woman's uterus for parts.
USING "embryonic stem cell research" (ESCR) as a Trojan Horse, the authors of New Jersey Assembly Bill 2840 are trying to sneak one of the most radical human cloning legalization schemes ever proposed into law. How radical is A-2840? If the bill passes, it will be legal in New Jersey to implant cloned human embryos into wombs, gestate them for up to nine months, and then destroy them for use in research.
Assembly Bill-2840 is a sneaky piece of legislation. Its advocates publicly state that the proposed law would allow embryonic stem cell research from embryos left over from IVF procedures to be conducted. But promoting ESCR--which is already legal under federal law--is merely the front purpose of A-2840. Its true raison d'être is to explicitly authorize researchers to conduct experiments on cloned human embryos and fetuses, a radical purpose clearly discernable within the bill's text:
* First, the legislation would explicitly authorize the manufacture of human cloned embryos via the somatic nuclear cell transfer (SCNT) cloning procedure. (SCNT was the method used to create Dolly the sheep.)
* Second, unlike the Hatch/Feinstein approach to authorizing and regulating human cloning for biomedical research at the federal level, A-2840 does not prohibit the implantation of cloned embryos into wombs. This is important because if an action is not illegal, by definition, it is legal.
* Finally, the legislation would criminalize the "cloning of a human being," as a "crime of the first degree."
The key to understanding the radical depth and scope of A-2840 is in the bill's definition of the term "human being":
As used in this section, "cloning a human being," means the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material [the SCNT cloning process] through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual. (my emphasis)
Read this sentence carefully. Its terms would make it legal in New Jersey to create a human cloned embryo, implant it in a willing woman's womb, gestate it through the ninth month, and only require that the cloned fetus be killed before it becomes a "new human individual," e.g., at the very point of birth. This means that law would expressly permit implantation and gestation for any amount of time before the cloned fetus becomes a "new human individual"!
Amazingly, in December 2002, an identical bill passed the New Jersey Senate (S-1909) without a single dissenting vote. From there, it went to the New Jersey Assembly where, despite warnings about its radical scope, the Health and Human Services Committee passed A-2840 onto the Assembly floor. By that point, the alarm bells were ringing nationally, generating vigorous opposition.
The crucial moment came when four renowned public intellectuals and members of the President's Council on Bioethics (William Hurlbut of Stanford University, Robert P. George of Princeton University, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo of Georgetown University, and Gilbert C. Meilaender of Valparaiso University) wrote to Governor James E. McGreevy urging that the bill be withdrawn. "New Jersey would authorize human cloning and the harvesting and use of body parts of cloned humans in the embryonic and fetal stages of development," they warned, threatening "to make New Jersey a haven for unethical medical practices, including the macabre practice of human fetal farming." Hurlbut et al further worried:
The pending legislation expressly authorizes the creation of new human beings by cloning and, perhaps unintentionally, their cultivation from the zygote stage through the newborn stage for the purpose of harvesting what the bills themselves refer to as "cadaveric" fetal tissue. Please pause to consider whose cadaver the tissue is to be derived from. It is the cadaver of a distinct member of the species homo sapiens--a human being--who would be brought into being by cloning and, presumably, implanted and permitted to develop to the desired stage of physical maturation for the purpose of being killed for the harvesting of his or her tissues. |
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With the cat out of the bag, the sponsors of A-2840 pulled the bill from the Assembly floor. But this was only a tactical retreat. Demonstrating that their purpose goes beyond authorizing the already legal ESCR, the bill's sponsors did not amend their proposal to do away with the cloning license or limit the maintenance of human clones to the early embryonic stage, say, by prohibiting implantation. Instead, they waited for a propitious moment to push A-2840 through the New Jersey Assembly when there would not be opportunity for extended debate. That time has now arrived. As the Assembly session is coming to a close, A-2840 is back on the legislative front burner and being pushed toward a snap vote on December 15. Having already passed the state Senate with vigorous support from Governor McGreevey, New Jersey will become the first sovereignty in the world to legalize cloned human fetal vivisection unless the Assembly rejects this bill. In the words of Leon Kass, "Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder."
Wesley J. Smith is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. His next book will explore the science, morality, and business aspects of human cloning. |
http://www.goexcelglobal.com/We%20Need%20To%20Talk.pdf
or/
http://www.goexcelglobal.com/WeNeedToTalk/index.html
I suppose it was a waste of time, but I meant well of it.
{ The First Human Cloned Embryo / November 24, 2001 / Scientific American by Jose B. Cibelli, Robert P. Lanza, and Michael D. West, with Carol Ezzell [23]
“THEY WERE SUCH TINY DOTS, YET THEY HELD SUCH immense promise. After months of trying, on October 13, 2001, we came into our laboratory at Advanced Cell Technology to see under the microscope what we’d been striving for—little balls of dividing cells not even visible to the naked eye.
…
With a little luck, we hoped to coax the early embryos to divide into hollow spheres of 100 or so cells called blastocysts. We intended to isolate human stem cells from the blastocysts to serve as the starter stock for growing replacement nerve, muscle and other tissues that might one day be used to treat patients with a variety of diseases. Unfortunately, only one of the embryos progressed to the six-cell stage, at which point it stopped dividing.
…
WE LAUNCHED OUR ATTEMPT to create a cloned human embryo in early 2001. We began by consulting our ethics advisory board, a panel of independent ethicists, lawyers, fertility specialists and counselors that we had assembled …” }
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