PUBLIC STATEMENTS

Cloning Controversy Raises Specter Of Brave New World and Nazi Doctors

Washington, DC - Over the Thanksgiving Holiday, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) of Worcester, Massachusetts announced that it had cloned the first human embryo. According to ACT vice president Dr. Robert Lanza, this effort was designed to use the embryo as a source for stem cells. "Our intention is not to create cloned human beings but rather to make lifesaving therapies for a wide range of human disease conditions," said Lanza. 

ACT's announcement makes it all the more urgent that the Senate quickly vote to approve S. 790, the "Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001." The House passed its version of this bill in July, but it has been stalled in the Senate ever since.

This legislation was introduced in the Senate by Sam Brownback (R-KS). The introduction to this bill notes: "Nearly all scientists agree that such attempts [at cloning] pose a massive risk of producing children who are stillborn, unhealthy, or severely disabled, and considered opinion is virtually unanimous that such attempts are therefore grossly irresponsible and unethical. . . . creating cloned live-born human children (sometimes called 'reproductive cloning') begins by creating cloned human embryos, a process which some also propose as a way to create embryos for research or as sources of cells and tissues for possible treatment of other humans."

ACT has now entered the business of manufacturing baby humans whose bodies will be cannibalized for use by other humans. Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World" would be amazed that his 1932 novel is now a reality in the United States.

In "Brave New World" a group of "World Controllers" run the lives of every human being on earth and children are created in test tubes in government-run hatcheries. These children, however, are not allowed to grow normally. Some are genetically engineered to be retarded so they can perform the mundane tasks of life. Others are genetically programmed to be leaders in this government-enforced caste system.

In this future culture, one human egg produces up to 96 identical twins. These embryos eventually go to the "Social Predestination Room," where they are engineered for leadership or for a life of mindless servitude to the state.

Perhaps the scientists at Advanced Cell Technology are using "Brave New World" as their office procedures manual. Or, they may have adopted the philosophy of human life advocated by Germans Dr. Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding in 1920. Their essay, "Releasing Persons from Lives Devoid of Value," proposed a new medical ethic for dealing with the mentally retarded and others whose lives were considered to be useless. Hoche and Binding recommended the killing of those considered worthless and described this as a "healing treatment" and "healing work." They believed that killing the unwanted was a positive contribution to German society.

This new philosophy of killing as "healing work" swiftly took root among pre-Nazi German doctors and eventually paved the way for the Nazi Holocaust. Dr. Leo Alexander, who served in the office of the war crimes tribunal at the Nuremberg trials, detailed the resultant horrors of medicine under Adolf Hitler in his 1949 essay, "Medical Science Under Dictatorship," published in the "New England Journal of Medicine."

Alexander said the Nazi experience should serve as a warning to medical professionals about how their view of human life can affect the future of mankind. Under Nazism, German doctors began to believe that some people did not deserve to live. "Gradually it led to the killing the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans," said Alexander. 

What value do ACT scientists place on the human lives they will be creating in their laboratories? Are these human embryos undeserving of life? Will Congress allow humans to be manufactured for their stem cell tissues? We already know where this has led in the past. We are currently killing more than 4,000 unborn children each day in the U.S. and the abortion industry is aggressively marketing many of the body parts of these dead babies to research facilities. Are we now going to approve the creation of new babies for high-tech cannibalism?

Traditional Values Coalition is an interdenominational public policy organization representing more than 43,000 churches across the United States. For more information, contact Emily Davis at 202-547-8570. TVC's Web site is: www.traditionalvalues.org.