[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 26, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H1358-H1359]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HUMAN CLONING BAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Renzi) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RENZI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) 
for reintroducing H.R. 534, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003.
  The American public needs to be made aware of the political spin and 
propaganda that the so-called medical research community is using to 
deceive us. The cloned sheep, Dolly, was created by the cloning 
procedure called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
  Some want to use this procedure for research on humans which they now 
call ``therapeutic cloning.'' As the debate has intensified, what was 
called human cloning is now referred to as ``nuclear transplantation.'' 
I ask my fellow Americans not to be deceived by their words which are 
designed to be politically correct.
  Those who want to perform therapeutic cloning claim that the future 
holds cures to many of the diseases that ail our human society. This 
argument plays to the hearts and minds of

[[Page H1359]]

compassionate Americans. It hits all the political hot buttons and it 
makes it seem as though human cloning is a great discovery in our day 
and age that will cure cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and even 
keep our country safe from the terrorists by identifying the origins of 
germ and biological weapons.
  However, creating cloned human embryos raises the real possibility 
that one day they will be implanted into a woman's uterus to create a 
human cloned baby. Over 95 percent of all animal clonings attempted end 
in failure; and, like Dolly the sheep, cloned animals have genetic 
abnormalities.
  Most scientists agree that human cloning poses a serious risk of 
producing babies that are stillborn, unhealthy, and have severe 
malformations.
  Let us not forget the ethical problems associated with human cloning. 
Cloning is entirely unsafe to practice on human beings because it poses 
serious risks to the developing cloned baby and to pregnant women due 
to genetic abnormalities. The attempts to perfect human cloning despite 
the high risk of injury would constitute a violation of the fundamental 
principles of all medical research to do no harm.
  Research cloning will not only make reproductive cloning more likely, 
it is unethical. Regardless of what you think about the moral status of 
human embryos, human beings should not be created solely for research. 
Human cloning for research involves the creation of a human cloned 
embryo to be bought, sold and stripped, and exploited for its many 
parts.

                              {time}  1745

  Such proponents have crossed the ethical line universally adopted 
even by supporters of embryo stem cell research.
  As always, in simplicity we find the truth. Human cloning, whether 
for research or reproduction, involves the creation of a new human 
life. We have reached a point in our Nation's history where arrogant 
scientists and medical researchers have become so emboldened with the 
race to become the first to genetically manipulate human life that they 
have set aside all standards of human decency, morality, and ethics. 
They rush to usher in a new era in which genetic alteration of human 
life is common place; and, therefore, they become the creators of human 
life. They become the idols of their peers.
  I urge my colleagues to not allow such a gross violation of human 
dignity.

                          ____________________