Tony Perkins' Washington Update
February 16, 2005

Science Triumphs in the States, But a Specter Looms

A Missouri State Senate committee voted Monday to ban research involving cloning. Also on Monday the full Arizona House passed a similar bill sponsored by state Representative Bob Stump. The Missouri bill now faces a contentious time on the Senate floor and in the Missouri House, while the Arizona bill now must pass the state Senate. The Missouri bill's sponsor, Senator Matt Bartle, realizes he faces well-funded opposition in the form of research universities and big biotech companies. These companies flagitiously spread untruths about the science, making the usual claims that cloning does not produce a human embryo but only a lump of cells. They also pervert science and exploit the sick by claiming great cures to come if only they're allowed to do cloning. In the end the legislators must decide whether it is okay to create human beings for scientific sacrifice. Today, on the federal level, Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Representatives Mike Castle (R-DE) and Diana DeGette (D-CO) introduced a bill to overturn President Bush's embryonic stem cell policy, reducing human embryos to the equivalent of mere laboratory rats. Missouri State Senator Bartle and Arizona Representative Stump deserve credit for recognizing that creating life only to destroy it can never be licit, a lesson Senator Specter and his friends have not yet learned.

Tony Perkins' Washington Update
Family Research Council

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