PUBLIC STATEMENTS

CMA Doctors Deplore
"Cloning to Kill"

Washington, DC, --The nation's largest association of Christian physicians today deplored the announced cloning of human beings by Advanced Cell Technology (ACT).

David Stevens, MD, Executive Director of the 14,000-member Christian Medical Association, said, "It is wrong to create human life for the purpose of destroying it. Human clones are not merely, as some biotech industry representatives would have us believe, potential human beings. They are human beings. They have a complete homo sapien genetic code. Each one of us alive today began as a human embryo. If scientists had had license to destroy human embryos years ago, some of us would not be here today."

Dr. Stevens added, "Apparently the ACT public relations experts think the public will be reassured that these young human beings will not be implanted in a nurturing womb because the scientists promise to destroy them. What kind of scientific ethic allows us to treat human beings as 'things' to be exploited for their parts? Are human beings to be created on a whim and destroyed on a whim?"

Referring to claims that cloning a human being might lead to advances in stem cell therapies, Dr. Stevens countered, "Promising to do good by doing a wrong is never right. If there are any medical breakthroughs as a result of the 'clone to kill' approach, millions will be marginalized from accessing it because they were obtained by immoral means."

"Advanced Cell Technology has arrogantly moved ahead on a project that an overwhelming majority of the American people oppose and that is likely to be prohibited by Congress. If they will fly in the face of societal disapproval on this, what is to keep them from implanting a human clone when it suits their purposes?" Dr. Stevens asked.