[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 26 (Tuesday, March 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H713-H714]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             HUMAN CLONING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Ehlers] is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, for years the American public, and humans in 
general, have been fascinated with the possibility of creating human 
life by other than the natural means. This has given rise to stories 
such as Frankenstein, the attendant movies, and other horror stories 
related to that.
  This past week fears reached a new height when we discovered that 
British researchers had cloned a sheep. Immediately cries arose about 
the dangers of doing this, the British Government has threatened to 
withdraw funding for that research, et cetera. I would like to address 
the issue of cloning in general but more specifically the issue of 
human cloning.
  As my colleagues may be aware, I do have a scientific background, 
although not in the life sciences. I have to say that I am not the 
least surprised that we were able to clone a sheep and will not be the 
least surprised if someday we will be able to clone a human being. 
However, I strongly believe it should not be done.
  We have through the years tampered with the normal reproductive 
process, particularly as it relates to animals. First evidence of that 
was artificial insemination. Today most of the mammals produced for 
food, for dairy production, and so forth, begin life through the 
process of artificial insemination. We have even proceeded beyond that 
through surrogate parenting, selecting not only a father of choice but 
also a mother of choice, using in vitro fertilization, and placing the 
embryo in the uterus of an animal which is very good at carrying young 
and giving birth to them. But now we have reached another stage where 
we have through cloning created one animal which is in all regards 
identical to the animal from which its DNA was taken.
  Immediately the specter arises of doing the same for humans. I can 
assure you that, if we do not take steps to prevent research, in fact a 
human will be cloned.
  Mr. Speaker, I do applaud the President for this morning issuing a 
moratorium on the use of Federal funds for human cloning experiments. 
As he says in his comments,

       There is much about cloning that we still do not know. But 
     this much we do know: any discovery that touches upon human 
     creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry. It is 
     a matter of morality and spirituality as well.

  The President's view is that human cloning would give rise to deep 
concerns, given our most cherished concepts of faith and humanity. Each 
human life is unique, born of a miracle that reaches beyond laboratory 
science. The President believes we must respect this profound gift and 
resist the temptation to replicate ourselves. That is precisely the 
danger we face, that individuals with substantial amounts of money and 
very large egos would decide that they are such a great gift to 
humanity that in fact they should be cloned, so that there would

[[Page H714]]

be many copies of them to perpetuate their image and their ideas.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to make it clear in my opposition to this 
possible practice that I am not a Luddite. I do not automatically react 
against technological and scientific advances. Obviously not, for I am 
a scientist and have participated in many advances. But this issue of 
creating human beings through the cloning process raises such 
fundamental issues of ethics, morality, theology, and religious belief 
that I believe we should not only do as the President suggests, 
withhold funding, but I believe we should have an outright ban on 
experimentation on human cloning within the United States.
  Human life is sacred. The good Lord ordained a time-honored method of 
creating human life, commensurate with substantial responsibility on 
the part of the parents, the responsibility to raise a child 
appropriately. Creating life in the laboratory as we do with human 
cloning is totally inappropriate and so far removed from the process of 
marriage and parenting that has been instituted upon this planet that 
we must rebel against the very concept of human cloning. It is simply 
wrong to experiment with the creation of human life in this way.
  There are other aspects as well. What do we do with the failed 
experiments, the clones that go wrong? Are we simply going to say, 
well, they do not really matter because they were created in the 
laboratory? Will we simply dispose of them as we do with laboratory 
animal experiments that go wrong? Obviously you cannot. We are dealing 
with human beings.
  So because of the importance of this issue, the importance of 
preventing human experimentation of this sort, I will be introducing 
very shortly a bill that will ban the use of Federal funds for human 
cloning research and a second bill which will provide an outright ban 
on the practice of human cloning.

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