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Press Release
Scientists Create
Embryonic Stem Cells Without Killing Embryos!
· Rational
for “Therapeutic” Cloning Gone. Time For Congress NIH to
Ban All Cloning.
· Dolly
Sheep Creator Rejects Cloning, Plans To Pursue
Reprogramming Research.
· Bush
Policy Deserves Credit.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2007
The following statement
can be attributed to Nevada LIFE President Don Nelson:
There is STUNNING
news in stem cell research today that could end the
rationale for human cloning to create embryos for stem
cells. Scientists announced
today that they have successfully reprogrammed adult stem
cells back to an embryonic-like state.
Shinya Yamanaka of the
University of Kyoto in Japan
and a team of researchers
led by James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin
reported that they have created pluripotent cells from
human skin. (Pluriopotent cells are believed to be able
to become any kind of cell. Embryonic stem cells are
believed to be pluripotent).
The
researchers reverted human
connective tissue cells back to an
embryonic-stem-cell-like state and then differentiated
them into all three of the body’s major tissue types.
If this research is successful, there will be no need to
create human cloned embryos for use in embryonic-stem-cell
therapies.
This avenue of
stem cell research is so promising that Dolly the Sheep
Creator Ian Wilmut announced this weekend that he was
dropping human cloning to pursue this new research.
Wilmut said that the new research was "extremely
exciting and astonishing" and that he has no doubts “that
in the long term, direct reprogramming will be more
productive” than human cloning-called therapeutic
cloning, which creates a cloned embryo to be destroyed for
stem cells.
This research
is partial vindication of President Bush’s policy. If
the president caved to demands to change his policy, most
research efforts would have been devoted to trying to
perfect embryonic stem cell and human cloning research,
which has not worked as scientists have hoped.
Since cloning
humans for stem cells is no longer necessary to create a
source of embryonic stem cells, the NIH and states should
stop funding this sort of research and move the billions
of dollars in taxpayer funding to more promising
alternatives. Cloning advocates cannot say they have
had insufficient funds. Nearly $2 billion in federal,
state and private funds have been spent on embryonic stem
cell research and human cloning.
The Congress should move to outlaw human
cloning by passing the Brownback Landrieu Human Cloning
Prohibition Act.
Cloning to create human embryos not only treats human life
like raw materials for manufacturing, it increases the
chance that cloning to reproduce children will occur.
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