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7 November, 2006 – for
immediate release
SENATORS ‘CONNED’ INTO APPROVING HUMAN CLONING
Senators who voted today for a bill to legalise human
cloning had been “conned” into believing this was the only way medical science
could develop treatments and cures, the Australian Federation of Right to Life
Associations said today.
Spokesperson Mrs Kath Woolf said evidence from
leading scientists presented to both the Lockhart review and the Senate
committee on the Patterson Bill clearly showed that adult stem cells already
could do everything that scientists hope they would be able to do with embryonic
stem cells from cloned human embryos.
“The 34 senators who voted for human cloning
mistakenly thought they had to choose between the lives of laboratory human
embryos and cures or treatments for all kinds of diseases and medical
conditions,” Mrs Woolf said.
“These treatments and cures will come anyway from
ethically obtained and scientifically superior adult stem cells, which are
currently being used in more than 1000 human trials worldwide.
“In contrast, no human trials have been undertaken
with embryonic stem cell research because they cause tumors in
animals.”
Mrs Woolf said senators also had been subject to
emotional blackmail from patient advocacy groups who were cruelly manipulated by
the pro-cloning lobby into believing that medical advances could only occur
through legalisation of cloning.
She said many senators also wrongly believed that the
Australian public supported destructive research on cloned human embryos.
“The most recent in-depth independent research into
public attitudes to human cloning carried out by Sexton Marketing Group in
January 2006 through a national telephone poll of 1200 people found that only
29% of respondents support the cloning of human embryos as a source of stem
cells while 51% opposed the cloning of human embryos for stem cells.
“It would be a tragedy if the House of
Representatives followed the Senate’s lead in passing this ‘clone and kill’
bill, as development of human cloning techniques for research in Australia
inevitably will lead to live birth human cloning elsewhere in the
world.”
ENDS
Contact: Kath Woolf on 02 6251 5786 OR Alan Baker on 07 3221 1122 or 0412 265 157