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AN OPEN LETTER CC: President George W. Bush Dear Senators: As we approach Mother's Day and the Senate's momentous vote on cloning, we write to offer a point of view not much heard in the debate over human cloning. The nation has yet to give serious consideration to the range of mothers' issues that are at stake. We write to urge you to vote in favor of a permanent ban, or at a minimum, a five-year moratorium on all human cloning. We write not as scientists or as professional ethicists, but as mothers deeply concerned about the legacy that we will leave to our children should we go down the road toward human cloning. A permanent ban or a moratorium on human cloning is the only way that we, as a society, can gain some measure of control over the direction of biomedical research, research that offers great promise, but also great peril. Without a ban or a moratorium, cloning research will proceed before the people of the United States have fully considered all its implications and potential consequences, and our society will have little or no control over the future course of scientific initiatives that could alter the human species. The possibility of human cloning brings humanity to a crossroads. It is the most visible of a constellation of new technologies that open up the potential for redesigning human beings, leading to what reputable scientists and ethicists describe as a ``post-human" future in which human nature itself would be altered. Nearly all of the discussion and debate about human cloning and its implications has so far taken place among scientists, other experts, and special interests, in the academy and in the halls of government. Most of the people whose lives would be transformed by decisions that could alter our species have not had the opportunity to participate in these discussions. Because this unprecedented issue raises fundamental questions about human nature and the human species, people other than experts and those with special interests must have the opportunity to be educated, have their questions answered, form solid ethical judgments, and have a meaningful say about the direction in which we are going. Mothers, in particular, have a vital stake. Mothers and women who would be mothers are called to play leading roles in carrying out plans for cloning. Mothers and women who would be mothers would supply the eggs to be used to create clonal embryos. They would be called upon to offer their wombs to carry cloned fetuses to term. They would bear many of the physical and psychological risks of this revolutionary mode of reproduction. Human cloning, the asexual reproduction of a human being that is almost genetically identical to another living (or dead) human being, the making of a copy of another person, offers an entirely new and dangerous way of procreation through which human beings, instead of being created, will be manufactured. Reproductive cloning, the production of full-term human clones, would constitute a fundamental departure from the path of reproduction as we have known it and as mothers have participated in it throughout human history. A turn down the road toward human cloning would pose known and unknown perils to mothers and children. Attempts to produce cloned humans would involve dangerous experiments on mothers and children. The record on animal experiments shows that the overwhelming majority of cloned animals develop abnormally with many stillborns, miscarriages, deformities, and sudden and unexplained deaths. Female animals impregnated with cloned offspring have suffered from a wide range of complications that, in some cases, have killed them. In a world that would permit human cloning, mothers and children would bear the brunt of the many physical and emotional dangers associated with this completely new way of human reproduction. A turn down the road toward human cloning would risk creating an unprecedented market for women's eggs and for women's wombs and lead to a commodification of motherhood and human life itself. It would open wide the possibilities of the manufacture of human beings for reasons of vanity and for purposes of utility, posing great risks to children. And it would open the door to ``designer children" through human germline engineering, the altering of the genes of early-stage embryos to determine the traits of the children who will develop from those embryos. For these and many other reasons, we join the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose cloning for reproductive purposes. As a practical matter, the only way to carry out the will of the American people and effect a ban on reproductive cloning is to stop the process before it starts by preventing the production of clonal embryos. If cloning is allowed for research purposes, there would simply be no way of preventing research on clonal embryos from being used to produce full-term human clones. Knowledge about cloning procedures and techniques is widely diffused. There is no way to distinguish between clonal embryos and other embryos. And clonal embryos could be produced in private laboratories away from public scrutiny and implanted in women's wombs under the protection of doctor-patient confidentiality. Once embryos are routinely produced for research uses, it would be impossible to enforce a ban on reproductive cloning. We are mindful of the many calls for support of research cloning that could possibly lead to therapies to bring relief to people suffering from a host of diseases from Alzheimer's to Parkinson's to diabetes and cancer. Among the most commonly discussed possibilities is the cloning of rejection-proof cells derived from an individual's own embryonic clone. Yet the available evidence suggests that there is serious question whether these cells will, in fact, be rejection-proof. There may also be other more promising, less treacherous, avenues to resolving the problem of immune rejection. We know of the pain and the human need expressed in the calls for help by people, including many mothers, who are sick or at high risk for certain diseases, or who have children or other loved ones who are sick or at risk, and we fully support research efforts aimed at relieving suffering that do not bear what the Center for Genetics and Society has described as the ``species-altering" implications borne by human cloning. We know that there are mothers who will disagree with the position we have taken and the reasons we have outlined. This open letter is also intended to spark a serious and respectful public debate among mothers about the fundamental issues at stake at this critical moment in human history. Decisions about human cloning and other technologies with the potential to re-engineer the human species should not be made as a result of a process in which the voices of scientists and other experts drown out other voices. The voices of mothers, no less than the voices of scientists and other stakeholders, must be heard and allowed to inform our national and international policies on the issue of human cloning and the wide range of technologies that have the potential to reshape our humanity. Our country needs time for a calm, broad-based, and deliberative national conversation on the critical issue of human cloning. Only through a permanent ban or a moratorium on human cloning will we have the necessary time and opportunity to work to catch up with the sciences, educate ourselves, ask questions, make informed decisions, and shape appropriate public policies before it is too late. Signatories Enola G. Aird Leni Schwartz Baxter, Ph.D Heidi Brennan Rahima Baldwin Dancy, CPM, LM Carlie Sorensen Dixon Jean Bethke Elshtain Maggie Gallagher Michele Mason Barbara Nicholson Peggy O'Mara Lysa Parker
Heather Briaddy, Ballston Spa, NY Lou Alice Collins, Lexington, SC Richard Farnham, Wildwood, FL Sarah Greene, Ballston Spa, NY Lori Jenke, Davenport, IA Kimberly Murauskas, Malta, NY Beth Povie, Burnt Hills, NY Dina Recinos, Montebello, CA Emily Robertson, Provo, UT Andrea Wildenberg, St. Paul, MN Last updated: April 8, 2004 |
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Institute for American Values |
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