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France to Allow Research on Living Embryos: Only "Reproductive" Cloning a Crime Against the Human Race

PARIS, July 9, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - France's Parliament has passed legislation making embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) legal in that country. The new law, according to the Associated Press article, "updates" a bioethics law of 1994 to make living human embryos available for research. The legislation also allows the "selection" of embryos in IVF labs to create children who will serve as tissue donors for sick siblings.

The legislation makes "reproductive" cloning of a human being, that is, the creation of a cloned person who will be allowed to live, a "crime against the human race" punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Insisting that reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning "are two different things", Mr Douste-Blazy said, "We must fight [...] with the Europeans to express our disgust of reproductive cloning. All reproductive cloning must be considered a crime against humanity."

Many have pointed out the complete spuriousness of the distinction, however. In an editorial that appeared in the National Post in February, Fr. Raymond De Souza neatly demolished the deception. "The research industry is trying convince the policymakers that the widespread revulsion at cloning can be overcome by the wholly artificial creation of "good cloning" and "bad cloning" categories. Governments are being urged to pass bans on reproductive cloning but to fund therapeutic cloning. The philosophical madness of such laws is obvious. "Clone-and-kill" for therapy is permitted; "clone-and-let-live" is prohibited."

Pro-life speaker and researcher, Scott Klusendorf of Stand to Reason, sent a letter to President Bush while the administration was deliberating over funding ESCR urging the President to curtail such research. Calling discrimination against embryonic human beings a "savage inequality" Klusendorf cited the advances made in disease therapies with adult stem cells. Klusendorf said, "Research that deliberately destroys one human being so another may benefit is not only a serious moral wrong, it is unnecessary."

Read coverage from Cordis News:
http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&AC...

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