Dear journalists:
Today an AP story appearing in many newspapers reports that New Jersey Governor
James McGreevey has just signed the nation's second state law allowing "stem
cell research." This is, to put it mildly, an obfuscation. Stem cell
research is already allowed in all 50 states, and even embryonic stem cell
research (a tiny part of the total stem cell research picture) is allowed
in 49 states (South Dakota being the only clear exception).
What the New Jersey law is designed to promote is human cloning for research
purposes (called in the bill "somatic cell nuclear transplantation").
What makes the New Jersey law unique, surpassing even the policy of the predecessor
California law of 2002, is that it proposes developing and killing cloned
humans right up to the moment of birth to obtain supposedly useful stem cells.
It achieves this end by the following explicit provisions:
a) the law explicitly makes it state policy to encourage "derivation
and use of human embryonic stem cells, embryonic germ cells and human adult
stem cells, including somatic cell nuclear transplantation." Embryonic
germ cells can be obtained only from FETUSES that are aborted after gestating
for eight weeks or so in a womb; adult stem cells are generally obtained
at or after birth.
b) the law then bans "the cloning of a human being," which
it defines as "the replication of a human individual by cultivating
a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn
stages into a new human individual." So if a cloned embryo is placed
in a womb and developed up to the ninth month, then killed for his or her
stem cells (or killed in the process of harvesting the stem cells), this
is permitted, because one has not taken the embryo THROUGH all the fetal
and newborn stages. (In fact state law might be said to require such killing
because once the embryo has implanted, allowing continued development to
birth and beyond would violate the new law).
Those of us who have warned that this issue is not just about the moral status
of early embryos, that it is about a broad agenda for creating a slave class
of engineered humans to be mined for their scientific and medical potential,
were right. Note that the national Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)
had sent one of its top officials, Michael Werner, up to New Jersey to testify
specifically in support of the New Jersey bill - this "fetus farming"
proposal is now the model bill for the country from the viewpoint of the biotech
companies.
Bills like this had been introduced this past year in at least nine states,
but had generally been defeated once legislators realized what the bills really
do - the sponsors of the New Jersey bill, by contrast, simply denied that
their bill means what it says, and managed to fool other legislators (and
maybe themselves). For an overview and critique of the nine state bills see:
www.cloninginformation.org/info/ABC-State-Laws.htm.
This New Jersey development is no surprise to those who have followed the
"human patenting" issue in Congress. When Congressman Weldon offered
an amendment this past year to prevent U.S. patenting of "human organisms,"
including cloned humans, BIO opposed this in a fact sheet that suggested the
following policy instead:
[A]n animal or human produced by conventional reproduction -- with no intervention
by an "inventor" -- would not qualify as a patentable "manufacture"
because it is a product of nature. Living organisms that possess physical
characteristics resulting from human intervention qualify for protection because
such living organisms are no longer "products of nature." (verbatim
from www.bio.org/ip/cloningfactsheet.asp)
So a "human" (apparently at ANY stage of development) should be
seen as a patentable "manufacture" or "invention," not
a product of nature, if he or she was produced by something other than "conventional
reproduction" (cloning certainly qualifies as unconventional) and was
designed by scientists to have some use. Again, the debate is not just about
the moral status of embryos - it is about a new form of slavery, in which
one class of humans can treat another class as disposable research material
depending on their usefulness and the circumstances of their origin. The New
Jersey law fits into this national biotech agenda perfectly.
But if you think that's not news, then never mind...
Richard M. Doerflinger
Secretariat
for Pro-Life Activities
US Conference
of Catholic Bishops