The Battle of the Ban...Continued from page 3

BIO-member companies swarmed Capitol Hill last year, rallying against the Weldon/Brownback legislation and supporting rival bills by Feinstein and Harkin.

The BIO is especially friendly toward Hatch, naming him its legislator of the year in 2000. Hatch received $400,000 in campaign contributions that year from biotech companies.

Weldon said grassroots pro-lifers must form new alliances to overcome biotech's influence.

"Some of our strongest allies in this battle are very strong pro-choice advocates," he told Citizen. "For example, Bernie Sanders ― a socialist congressman from Vermont, with a 100 percent abortion-rights voting record, is an original co-sponsor [of the Human Cloning Prohibition Act]. So, people shouldn't assume that this is the pro-life, conservative Christians against the pro-choice crowd. You can reach across the divide and have some unexpected allies."

Brownback told Citizen that activists should try to meet their senators face-to-face, at town hall meetings, for example, and state plainly that they oppose human cloning.

"Most members are out and around their state frequently, going to basketball games and major events. Citizens can show up and talk to them."

But what if Congress fails to approve a ban on all human cloning this year? What if the senators ignore the evidence Weldon presented? He offered Citizen a grim prediction:

Researchers will exploit college students and Third World women, paying them to undergo a risky procedure known as "superovulation," in which their ovaries are stimulated to produce an abundance of eggs. Back in the laboratory, the eggs would undergo somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT; see story on page 27), creating dozens of cloned human embryos.

Financing this effort will be individuals suffering from Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, paralysis, or a hundred other conditions, who are willing to kill for a cure.

"Some of the people who are the strongest advocates for a lot of this stuff, like Dianne Feinstein, claim, in the same breath, to be the strong defenders of women and women's issues," Weldon said. "You are going to have these biotech companies going to South America and paying women to get their eggs. Some of these women are going to have complications; some of these women are going to have depression. I wouldn't even be surprised if some of them have severe depression and commit suicide over this kind of thing.

"It's really ghastly if you think about it. It's horrible."

WHO TO CONTACT: Contact your U.S. senators by calling the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, or find contact information at www.citizenlinkorg by clicking on the Legislative Action Center.

WHAT TO SAY: Explain why you oppose all human cloning and support a complete ban, including a prohibition against cloning for "therapeutic" purposes.

* There's no evidence ― zero studies ― that stem cells extracted from cloned human embryos offer any benefit to patients with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, paralysis or any other condition.

* More than 80 scientific reports show stem cells extracted from adults have proven effective in treating disease.

* The only way to stop human cloning is to outlaw it before it starts.

This article appeared in the April 2003 issue of Citizen magazine. Copyright © 2003 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

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