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Cloned Human Embryos Created, Lab Claims; BDF Statement |
Contact:
Dorinda C. Bordlee, Esq.
Senior Counsel, Bioethics Defense Fund
504-231-7234
California lab claims to have cloned human embryos
Statement of Bioethics Defense Fund
January 17, 2008. NBC chief scientific correspondent Robert Bazell, in this MSNBC video news story, reports that if a California's lab's claims are true, "it is the first instance of cloning humans - only as embryos in a Petri dish, but still cloned human beings."
The MSNBC report features Dr. Samuel Wood of Stemagen Corp. in La Jolla, California explaining that "it was an amazing experience to look at that blastocyst and realize that it came from one of my cells. It's a bit like looking at yourself from a long time ago."
Bazell reports on bioethicist Art Caplan's comments that regardless of this company's intentions to create the cloned embryos only for embryonic stem cells, "there is nothing to stop someone else from trying to make a baby this way." Although the cloned embryos were destroyed, the lab has not been successful in culturing the clone's embryonic stem cells.
Bioethics Defense Fund President Nikolas T. Nikas commented that this news highlights the necessity of state and federal legislation banning the creation of cloned human embryos for any purpose.
"If true, the creation of human beings at the embryonic stage of life by cloning marks a new and decisive step toward turning human reproduction into a manufacturing process. The creation of human embryos for the purpose of exploitation as raw material for lab experiments is grossly immoral and a blatant violation of human dignity," said Nikas.
Dorinda C. Bordlee, BDF senior counsel, stated that this announcement "puts young women's reproductive health at risk because it will increase the demand for labs to treat women as egg farms by paying them to undergo dangerous hormone treatments so that the lab can harvest 10-20 human eggs per cycle for their cloning experiments."
For model legislation to ban human cloning and human egg harvesting, contact Bioethics Defense Fund at info@bdfund.org.
Bioethics Defense Fund is a public-interest legal organization whose mission includes advocating for human rights in science through litigation, legislation and public education.
Visit our Website:
Bioethics Defense Fund
Human Rights from Beginning to End
www.BDFund.org
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