Mohler: Cloning Announcement Represents Assault on Sanctity of Human Life

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Mohler: Cloning Announcement Represents Assault on Sanctity of Human Life

From:

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, KY

Monday, November 26, 2001

NEWS RELEASE

The Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary

Office of Communications

2825 Lexington Road ? Louisville, Kentucky 40280

Telephone: (800) 626-5525 ? in Kentucky, (502) 897-4141

Fax: (502) 897-4880

E-mail: lasmith@sbts.edu

For More Information Contact: Lawrence Smith, (502) 897-4141

#037

November 26, 2001

For immediate release

Mohler: Cloning announcement

represents assault on sanctity of human life

LOUISVILLE, Ky. ? News that a Massachusetts company has cloned human embryos represents a ?massive assault on the integrity and sanctity of human life? and amounts to nothing more than the destruction of living human beings for profit and unbridled ambition, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President R. Albert Mohler said in a statement Nov. 26.

Scientists for Advanced Cell Technology Inc. of Worcester, Mass., said Nov. 25 that they had cloned human embryos for what is commonly known as ?therapeutic cloning.? The process was done in October, and the results were published in the Journal of Regenerative Medicine,

Following is Mohler?s complete statement:

NEWS RELEASE (Continued)

The Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary

November 26, 2001

Page 2 of 2

Statement by R. Albert Mohler Jr. on human cloning:

?The cloning of human embryos is a massive assault on the integrity and sanctity of human life. The announcement that a commercial firm has cloned human embryos shocks the human conscience and represents the crossing of a very significant moral threshold.

The firm, Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT), is driven by a dangerous combination of the profit motive and the ambition to pioneer the field of therapeutic cloning. They have assembled their own group of ethicists-for-hire to provide the appearance of morality to their ambitions and are rushing to perform their experiments before the Congress can pass legislation to render their work illegal.

ACT claims that their interest is limited to therapeutic cloning for stem-cell research, and does not include work toward reproductive cloning, which they claim would be dangerous and unethical. At the same time, the very technology they employ and seek to perfect is precisely the technology required for reproductive cloning.

Human dignity requires that human embryos be treated with full respect and protected from all harm. The insidious argument put forth by ACT is that the embryos they have created (and intend to destroy) are not embryos at all, but only ?ovumsums,? ?embryo-like entities,? or ?activated eggs.? These are euphemisms worthy of Nazi Germany.

The embryos were produced by ACT using two different technologies. Neither produced an embryo that survived long enough to produce stem cells. Nevertheless, the company intends to move forward in their research ? which means further assaults on human embryos and human dignity.?

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Name: Lawrence A. Smith

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Group: The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

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