BROAD-BASED COALITION OPPOSES HUMAN CLONING.

Editor's note. The following are excerpts from some of the many groups that held a press conference November 26 in response to the announcement by Advanced Cell Technology that the company had cloned human embryos.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron, Dean, The Wilberforce Forum

Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology has thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of civilization. ... When with the President's support the House of Representatives voted 267-162 for the Weldon-Stupak bill, it seemed that 2001 would be the year in which we finally said No to human cloning. But September 11 supervened, and in the face of war debate on cloning along with other important matters was suspended.

But Advanced Cell Technology (ACT)...has now taken gross advantage of this de facto moratorium in policy development to try to force a change in the status quo. No longer are we speaking of preventing the cloning of human beings. All of a sudden, humans have been cloned. ACT, under cover of its secret ethics committee, has forged ahead. While we have been focusing on the prosecution of war, they have sought to shift the conversation by a fait accompli. And while we were celebrating Thanksgiving with our families, through a slick PR maneuver Michael West has made their announcement to the world. They must be stopped.

The revulsion of the American people for human cloning is unambiguous.... [T]hose who favor experimental cloning have sought to characterize this as a re-run of the argument over abortion. As leading pro-choicer and biotech legal expert Lori Andrews and I argued in a recent op-ed (Chicago Tribune, August 8, 2001), this is false. A wide coalition has come together that favors an outright ban on all cloning.

Dr. Richard Land, President, Southern Baptist Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission

Advanced Cell Technology's linguistic strategy must be challenged as well. Those who claim that Advanced Cell Technology's goal is not to create "human beings" but "human embryos" are being duplicitous. A human embryo is a very young human being and nothing less. In fact, scientists are cloning those embryos precisely because they are human beings.