[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15150]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                CLONING

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, the columnist Charles Krauthammer called 
legislation that we are going to consider today to permit cloning human 
embryos a ``nightmare and an abomination.'' It truly is.
  Some of those who support this proposal are so eager to clone human 
beings that they have taken to twisting the truth to promote their 
arguments. The latest thing they are saying is that cloned embryos are 
not really embryos at all. They say that if you use body cells instead 
of sperm to fertilize an egg, that that really is not an embryo.
  Mr. Speaker, that is ridiculous. Take a look at this picture of Dolly 
the sheep. Everybody knows that Dolly is a clone. Dolly was made by 
fertilizing a sheep egg with a cell taken from the mammary gland of 
another sheep. It took 277 tries before they got a clone that worked. 
Now she is 5 years old.
  Those who argue that cloned human embryos are not really embryos 
might as well argue that Dolly is not a sheep. That is ridiculous.
  Cloning human beings is wrong. Eighty-eight percent of the American 
people do not want scientists to create human embryos for the purpose 
of experimentation, harvesting and destruction. We will be voting later 
today to ban all human cloning. Support the Weldon-Stupak bill.

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