[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13942-13943]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             SOMATIC CELL NUCLEAR TRANSFER IS HUMAN CLONING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page 13943]]


  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the bioethical issues that we 
have been debating for the past several years, and particularly over 
the last couple of months, deal with fundamental questions about the 
value of human life and the meaning of human dignity. Every poll 
conducted on the subject of human embryo cloning for research indicates 
that 70 to 80 percent of the American people oppose human embryo 
cloning for research purposes. Cloning advocates know that the American 
public is adamantly opposed to their goals, so they have crafted new 
speech in an attempt to deliberately mislead Members of Congress, the 
media, grassroots advocates and the American public.
  One of the leading patient advocacy groups for human cloning research 
is the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and they have been 
sanitizing the language and playing semantic games with a willing media 
and an unaware American public.
  Let me give you a few examples. Last year when representatives of the 
JDRF stopped by my office, they shared with my staff that they endorsed 
stem cell research involving somatic cell nuclear transfer. When my 
staff replied that somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, was the 
cloning of human embryos, the JDRF advocates in my office responded 
that they had been told by those training them for their Hill visit 
that SCNT did not create a human embryo because sperm was not used. 
Indeed, the literature in their own hands stated the following: ``When 
scientists use SCNT to create stem cells, no sperm is used and the 
resulting cell has no chance of developing into a human being because 
it is never placed in a uterus. This is a fundamentally different 
procedure from reproductive cloning, as was used by scientists in 1996 
to create Dolly the sheep.''
  This statement is misleading on several counts. JDRF is flat-out 
wrong when they state that SCNT is a ``fundamentally different 
procedure from reproductive cloning, as was used by scientists in 1996 
to create Dolly the sheep.'' Dr. Ian Wilmut, Dolly's own creator, does 
not agree with the JDRF statement. Dr. Wilmut stated clearly in a peer-
reviewed article, ``the unique feature of Dolly was that she was the 
first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic body cell.'' Then he 
goes on to say, ``The success of somatic cell nuclear transfer was used 
in creating Dolly.''
  Cloning supporter and then-NIH Director Harold Varmus testified in 
1998 stating, ``in the Dolly experiment, a lamb was produced using the 
technology of somatic cell nuclear transfer.''
  JDRF implies that sperm is necessary to develop an embryo capable of 
growing into a human. This notion is completely inaccurate, as hundreds 
of animals have been created through SCNT using no sperm. Was Dolly not 
a sheep because sperm was not involved? JDRF characterizes the 
resulting product of SCNT as merely a cell with no chance of developing 
into a ``human.'' But President Clinton's own Bioethics Advisory 
Commission disagrees with this statement. In 1997 his commission 
stated, ``the commission began its discussions fully recognizing that 
any effort in humans to transfer a somatic cell nucleus into an 
enucleated egg involves the creation of an embryo, with the apparent 
potential to be implanted in utero and developed to term.''
  Many of the JDRF advocates that have visited Members of Congress are 
not to be faulted for this misinformation. They are simply sharing with 
you what those running JDRF's Hill advocacy program have told them. In 
fact, the patients and families selected to participate in the 2005 
JDRF Children's Congress in Washington were required to assign a 
loyalty oath agreeing to support the JDRF position on these issues. The 
loyalty oath found on that application, which I have blown up, and I 
have next to me right here states, ``If there is a discussion of such 
controversial topics as embryonic stem cell research, I will either 
embrace the JDRF legislative position on such topics or will not work 
against the JDRF position.''
  This statement clearly calls for applicants to be willing to embrace 
ethically questionable research or be willing to muzzle their personal 
and moral convictions. Let us have an honest debate on embryonic stem 
cell research and let us have an honest debate on human cloning and 
what it is. It is somatic cell nuclear transfer.

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