wfn.org | President lends support to anti-cloning legislation

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 11, 2002   News media contact: Joretta Purdue7(202)
546-87227Washington 10-21-71BP{158}

NOTE: Head-and-shoulders photographs of President George W. Bush, Bishop
Felton E. May and Jim Winkler are available at
http://umns.umc.org/photos/headshots.html online.

By Joretta Purdue*

WASHINGTON (UMNS) - When President Bush spoke against human cloning to an
audience of more than 100 people on April 10, he may have appeared to be
preaching to the choir.

Most of the people attending the conference in the White House's East Room
were there because of their work to promote a ban on human cloning.  

They included Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), the
leading co-sponsors of a bill in the Senate that would prohibit all human
cloning in the United States. Brownback is a United Methodist, like the
president, and several other members of the denomination were in the
audience.

Invited guests included Bishop Felton E. May, who leads the church's
Washington Area; Jim Winkler, staff head of the United Methodist Board of
Church and Society, and Jaydee Hanson, an executive with that board; and the
Rev. Amy Laura Hall, a Duke Divinity School faculty member who serves on the
church's Bioethics Task Force.

"Our age may be known to history as the age of genetic medicine, a time when
many of the most feared illnesses were overcome," President Bush said. Such
progress must be accompanied by care, restraint and responsibility, he said.
"Advances in biomedical technology must never come at the expense of human
conscience."

Science has created situations that require decisions of great consequence,
the president said. Society can pursue medical research "with a clear sense
of moral purpose" or it can "travel without an ethical compass," he said.
Human cloning is the issue that determines which path is followed, he said.

"As we seek what is possible, we must always ask what is right, and we must
not forget that even the most noble ends do not justify any means," he
declared.

He noted that companies in various parts of the world have begun producing
embryonic human clones for research purposes and have announced the
intention to produce cloned children, despite the large number of
spontaneous abortions and abnormalities produced in the laboratory cloning
of animals.

"Life is a creation, not a commodity," Bush said. "Our children are gifts to
be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured."

He warned that allowing cloning would "be taking a significant step toward a
society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children
are engineered to custom specifications."  He termed such a situation "not
acceptable." 

He noted that some participants in this debate are distinguishing between
human cloning for research and human cloning for reproduction.

"I believe all human cloning is wrong, and both forms of cloning ought to be
banned," Bush said. Such cloning would be unethical and exploitive, he said.
He also asserted that enforcing any limitation less than a total ban would
be impossible.

"Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place," he
said. 

He concluded his 15-minute talk by urging passage of the bill proposed by
Landrieu and Brownback.

"I very much appreciated the president's remarks," Winkler told United
Methodist News Service afterward, "particularly his comment that life is a
creation, not a commodity. I couldn't agree more. I thought his remarks were
very consistent with the United Methodist Church's opposition to human
cloning and was grateful for that."

"I am pleased that the president's message is consistent with the
longstanding views of the United Methodist Church on this concern," Bishop
May said.

"We hope the U.S. Senate will support the Brownback-Landrieu Bill as the
president has," Hanson added.

Hall, an ethicist, agreed with the president that the issue of human cloning
is not just about the dignity of lives that are coming into being but about
the dignity of women's lives and bodies. She praised the president for
taking a courageous position.

"I disagree with Bush on so many issues but admired his stand on this," she
said. 

This is not a stance that is going to win him wide support, she added.
"There is a significant amount of money to be made. Bush is going against
the traditional instincts of his party, which has been market driven." She
noted that the medical technology complex "is every bit as powerful as the
military-industrial complex was when Eisenhower coined the term."

Hall also reported being struck by the philosophical diversity of the people
who support the ban, as reflected in the variety of people who had gathered
to hear the president. "This is something that does unite some feminists and
some conservatives who do not usually align themselves with feminists," she
said.

If she had had a chance to speak to the president, Hall said she would have
told him, "Americans are, at our best, a hospitable, generous and inventive
people. ... We stand at a point in history when our ingenuity stands to make
us ever less generous and hospitable" toward human life that is just
beginning. 
# # #
*Purdue is news director of United Methodist News Service's Washington
bureau.

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United Methodist News Service
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