wfn.org | United Methodist joins other leaders to protest human cloning

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

Nov. 27, 2001  News media contact: Tim Tanton7(615)742-54707Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-71B{553}

By Dean Snyder*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- Immediately following the announcement by a New England
firm that it has cloned human life, a United Methodist national board joined
a coalition of strange political bedfellows to call for a ban on human
cloning.

Jaydee R. Hanson, a staff executive of the United Methodist Board of Church
and Society, supported the ban during a Capitol Hill press conference with
representatives of seven other groups, ranging from progressive
environmental and pro-choice organizations to the religious right and
right-to-life councils. The press conference was sponsored by Sen. Sam
Brownback, R-Kan., also a United Methodist, who said he will push for
legislation to ban cloning before the Senate's Christmas recess.

"It may be a surprise to some of the press that a denomination that supports
a woman's right to choose is here," Hanson told 75 reporters and a dozen TV
cameras gathered in the Russell Senate Office Building for the Nov. 26 press
conference.

Other religious groups participating were the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops and the Christian Coalition. 

Hanson said that the 2000 General Conference, the United Methodist Church's
top legislative assembly, adopted a resolution calling for "a complete and
total ban" of the kind of activities being conducted by Advanced Cell
Technologies, the Massachusetts firm that announced on Nov. 25 that it has
begun to make cloned human embryos.

"The church called for a ban on all human cloning, including the cloning of
human embryos," Hanson told reporters. "It also called for a ban on
therapeutic, medical, research and commercial procedures which generate
waste embryos."

Cloning and abortion are "very different" ethical issues, Hanson said during
an interview following the press conference. "It is one thing for a woman
and her family to make a really hard decision in a tragic situation," he
said. "It is another thing for scientists in a lab to patent human embryos,
to make a bank of human embryos, and the only way you can get to it is by
paying them money."

The church saw what was happening in the industry and didn't want to support
it, he said. "Do we really want an industry that depends on paying poor
women for their eggs to do research?"

The resolution opposing human cloning passed by General Conference in 2000
was the result of a study done by the Board of Church and Society's Genetic
Science Task Force formed in 1988. "United Methodists were in the forefront
of policy development on this," Hanson said. "Our genetic science task force
looked at the research that was being done and looked at what was likely to
be done and said 'no.'"

During the press conference, Hanson expressed concern that discussions about
the work being done by Advanced Cell Technologies might result in confusion
about the difference between cloning and stem cell research.

"The creation of human embryos by cloning or other procedures is not
necessary to pursue adult, placental or even embryonic stem cell research,"
he said. "And it is stem cell research that may hold the promise for
treatments -- not the creation of human embryos."

James Winkler, top staff executive of the Board of Church and Society, urged
Congress to pass a ban on human cloning in a Nov. 27 statement. "The United
Methodist Church has long understood that not everything that is currently
legal is moral," he said. "The General Conference of the United Methodist
Church called for a ban on all forms of human cloning. Congress should
promptly enact such a ban."

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Reform Jewish leaders support cloning
to cure diseases but oppose it for reproductive purposes, according to the
Associated Press.

The religious leaders' opposition to cloning agrees with that of President
Bush, who called on Congress Nov. 26 to ban the cloning of human embryos.
Bush is a United Methodist.

The General Conference resolution on human cloning includes the following
statement:
"We call for a ban on all human cloning, including the cloning of human
embryos. This includes all projects, privately or governmentally funded,
that are intended to advance human cloning. Transcending our concerns with
embryo wastage are a number of other unresolved and barely explored concerns
with substantial social and theological ramifications: use or abuse of
people, exploitation of women, tearing of the fabric of the family, the
compromising of human distinctiveness, the lessening of genetic diversity,
the direction of research and development being controlled by corporate
profit and/or personal gain, and the invasion of privacy. These unresolved
concerns generate significant distrust and fear in the general public."
(2000 Book of Resolutions, p. 254)

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*Snyder is director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Annual
Conference of the United Methodist Church.

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United Methodist News Service
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