Scientists in California claimed to have successfully cloned a human. Late last week, NBC chief scientific correspondent Robert Bazell reported that if this California's lab's claims are true, "it is the first instance of cloning humans - only as embryos in a petri dish, but still cloned human beings."

Dr. Samuel Wood of Stemagen Corp. in La Jolla, California explained that "it was an amazing experience to look at that blastocyst and realize that it came from one of my cells. It's a bit like looking at yourself from a long time ago." Dr. Wood had “no doubt the cloned humans would grow into human babies if they were put into a womb." He boldly admitted that these cloned humans were alive and growing, before they, including his own genetic twin, were destroyed.

Bioethics Defense Fund President Nikolas T. Nikas commented that, “If true, the creation of human beings at the embryonic stage of life by cloning marks a new and decisive step toward turning human reproduction into a manufacturing process. The creation of human embryos for the purpose of exploitation as raw material for lab experiments is grossly immoral and a blatant violation of human dignity.

"Therapeutic cloning, otherwise known as 'clone to kill,' results in the creation of human life for the purpose of harvesting body parts for the benefit of another," says Dan Becker, President of Georgia Right to Life. "This is reminiscent of Nazi Germany and underscores the need for a Human Life Amendment that would assign personhood and hence, protection to the most vulnerable members of our society.”

As Representative Martin Scott, who introduced HR 536 (The Human Life Amendment) to the Georgia Assembly, stated, “We live in an age where our biotechnical advances are outpacing any political will for ethical restraint.” The Human Life Amendment is the best way to provide these constraints and moral boundaries to the rapid advances in biomedical technology.

Echoing Rep. Scott, Becker continued, "The ideas of Brave New World are no longer science fiction, but staring us coldly in the face. Whenever human lives are treated as commodities, human dignity becomes the victim. When human beings become disposable in our society, ultimately human life at every stage of development is devalued. This means that even the born are at risk of being killed. This underscores the need that we have for a constitutional amendment protecting all human life from the earliest stages of fertilization until natural death. This underscores the need for HR 536.”

Georgia Right to Life is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-sectarian organization of diverse and caring people united to engage in actions that will restore respect and effective legal protection for all human beings from the moment of fertilization until natural death.

Source:  www.grtl.org