Christian Doctors Skeptical Of Clone Announcement And Concerned About Implications

12/27/2002

From: Margie Shealy of Christian Medical Association, 423-844-1000 or 423-844-1047 e-mail: mashealy@cmdahome.org

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 -- The nation's largest association of Christian doctors today expressed skepticism about a cult's announcement of a cloned baby but said the specter heightens the need for legislation and ethical consideration.

"Whether or not this claim is true remains to be proven, but it certainly highlights our need to pass a ban on human cloning before a true tragedy happens," noted David Stevens, M.D., Executive Director of the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association.

"Sensible people all over the country are horrified that anyone would attempt to clone a human being given the high probability of deaths and gruesome birth defects. It's likewise morally reprehensible to mandate the destruction of human embryos who are cloned for the sole purpose of experimentation. The only difference between research and reproductive cloning is that in the latter, one of the people created may survive.

"We've fooled around in the Senate to the point where we may soon going to have to deal with the tragedy of a cloned human baby. We need a ban on human cloning of any kind, and we need it now."

Stevens said the clone birth announcement by Cloneaid, a company birthed by the extraterrestrial-worshiping cult leader Rael, highlights a decline in regard for the sanctity of human life.

"With the high rate of death and deformity experienced in animal cloning and presumably applied to humans as well, even to experiment with human cloning shows a horrible disregard for the value of human life," Stevens asserted. "It's one thing to deal with naturally occurring birth defects, but quite another for scientists to actually cause those defects through cloning."

"I suppose this is the natural evolution of the concept of choice in parenting," Stevens observed. "First you choose whether or not to keep a child, then you choose what kind of child you want to design. Through genetic selection, parents simply dispose of children who don't meet their criteria; through cloning they design a child who does.

"The basic moral question is should we allow scientists to destroy dozens of individuals to give parents the child they want?"