Statement in the Ad Hoc Committee on the international convention against the reproductive cloning of human beings, February 26, 2002.

• Author: Wilson, Carolyn

Mr. Chairman,

We would like to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to the French and German governments for taking the initiative on human cloning, and to the members of the two panels that have provided the Ad Hoc Committee with valuable background information. My delegation welcomes the opportunity to explain the position of the United States on this issue.

Cloning refers to any process that results in the creation of an identical or nearly identical genetic copy of a molecule, cell, or individual plant, animal, or human. Cloning occurs in nature. Somatic cell nuclear transfer is a cloning technique used by scientists to produce a nearly genetically identical copy of an existing animal. The product of somatic cell nuclear transfer is an embryo.

Scientists conduct two types of experiments using somatic cell nuclear transfer. The first type of experiment, sometimes described as "reproductive" cloning, involves the creation of an embryo through cloning, and its subsequent implantation into the uterus with the objective of creating a living animal. The other kind of experiment, sometimes described as "research," "experimental," or "therapeutic" cloning, involves the creation of a cloned embryo, which is then used to derive stem cells or, after the embryo is grown to a fetal stage, tissues for transplantation. For example, after the embryo grows to the blastocyst stage in 5-9 days, the embryo is destroyed in order to derive embryonic stem cells that may hold the potential for the development of cell replacement therapies.

Human cloning is an enormously troubling development in biotechnology. It is unethical in itself and dangerous as a precedent. The possible creation of a human being through cloning raises many ethical concerns. It constitutes unethical experimentation on a child-to-be, subjecting him or her to enormous risks of bodily and developmental abnormalities. It threatens human individuality, deliberately saddling the clone with the genetic makeup of a person who has already lived. It risks making women's bodies a commodity, with women being paid to undergo risky drug treatment so they will produce the many eggs that are needed for cloning. It is also a giant step toward a society in which life is created for convenience, human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to fit eugenic specification.

We cannot allow human life to be devalued in this way. A proposal has been made to ban only...