Averting a Catastrophe.(human cloning laws)(Brief Article)

" `Human beings should not be cloned to stock a medical junkyard of spare parts for medical experimentation,' said House majority whip Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas. Cloning, even for research purposes alone, is `no better than medical strip mining. The preservation of life is what's being lost here,' DeLay said on the House floor."

August 1 Boston Globe

"The chronically ill, desperate for help, are easy marks for grand promises of imminent cure. In earlier times, many a quack or preacher took advantage of their gullibility. Today they still are being exploited, only the cures are being promised by biotech entrepreneurs. The latest panacea is a fiction called `therapeutic cloning,' now being peddled in Congress to sabotage an urgently needed legislative ban on cloning human beings."

As well as anyone and better than most, pro-lifers appreciate that victory most often consists of staving off the initiatives of those who have placed their consciences in deep freeze. While there are any number of battles yet to fight in this particular war, when the House of Representatives withstood pressure to adopt what columnist Charles Krauthammer rightly described as a "nightmare and an abomination," the absurdly mislabeled "Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001," sponsored by James Greenwood (R-Pa.), the good guys prevailed. (See story, page one.)

The biotechnology industry's dream-come-true, Greenwood's bill--rejected 249-178--would have allowed human embryos to be created by cloning for research but with the strict proviso that they could not be implanted. This would mean that it would be legal to create human life by cloning but illegal to allow that same human embryo to live--a.k.a. "clone and kill."

Instead the House strongly backed the "Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001," sponsored by Rep. Dave Weldon, M.D. (R-Fl.), and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mi.), 265-162. The measure flat-out prohibits the creation of human embryos by cloning. The bi-partisan coalition included 200 Republicans who were joined by 63 Democrats and two independents.

Listening to the discussion and following how the House debate was covered in the media, you quickly learn two things. First, their language (as columnist Paul Greenberg said of Bill Clinton) is "as flexible as a forger's handwriting." Second, most of the media and almost the entire public are on opposite ends of the spectrum on this one.