This is a press release from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in Washington, D.C., issued Monday, April 8, 2002, at 3 p.m. Eastern Time.

For further information, send e-mail to Legfederal@aol.com, and/or contact: Laura Echevarria, NRLC Media Relations, 202-626-8825, 202-626-8820.

WASHINGTON -- Leaders of a number of state affiliates of the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) are coming to Washington this week, at the invitation of the White House, to hear President Bush speak on the urgent issue of banning human cloning.

The President will speak on the subject on Wednesday, April 10, at 1:15 p.m. ET, in the Rose Garden, according to a White House announcement.

"The situation is urgent -- the Senate must quickly pass the Brownback-Landrieu bill, before human embryo farms open for business," said NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson. But, he added, "Senators are under great pressure from the pro-cloning biotech industry lobby to support a phony counter-proposal -- a bill that would allow mass cloning of human embryos for the specific purpose of killing them in experimentation."

Besides several leaders of the NRLC national organization, invitations have been issued to and accepted by NRLC state leaders from over a dozen states (including Virginia). They will join representatives of numerous other organizations, all united in support of the Brownback-Landrieu bill (S. 1899), which would ban the cloning of human embryos. Identical legislation (the Weldon-Stupak bill) passed the House of Representatives on July 31, 2001, by a vote of 265-162, but has been stalled in the Senate by resistance from Democratic Senate leaders and intense lobbying by the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

The biotech industry lobby is pushing competing legislation, falsely labeled as a "human cloning ban," which in reality would permit so-called "therapeutic cloning" (that is, the cloning of human embryos for use as medical commodities or in lethal experimentation), but prohibit the implantation of any cloned embryo in a womb, thus requiring that they die. Pro-life groups regard this "clone and kill" legislation as worse than no legislation at all, because in effect it would require the federal government to ensure that every cloned human embryo is killed. The House decisively rejected this pro-embryo-farming legislation, 249-178, and President Bush has also repeatedly expressed his opposition to it.

Contrary to many press reports, the biotech-backed legislation does not "ban cloning of a human being but allow cloning research to produce stem cells." Rather, the bio-backed legislation allows unrestricted cloning of human embryos for any purpose whatever. Cloned human embryos would be used for many purposes, including harvesting of their stem cells (which will kill the embryos) and for sale as patented experimental subjects, analogous to tailored strains of white mice. In contrast, the Brownback-Landrieu bill explicitly allows "the use of nuclear transfer or other cloning techniques to produce molecules, DNA, CELLS OTHER THAN HUMAN EMBRYOS, tissues, organs, plants, or animals other than humans." [capitals added for emphasis] Thus, the Brownback-Landrieu bill would allow the use of cloning to produce "cells" -- including stem cells -- but not by first creating and then killing a human embryo to harvest his or her stem cells.

For further information on the two bills and other aspects of this issue, including recent radio ads produced by NRLC, see the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/Index.html.

For statements and documentation produced by numerous organizations opposed to human cloning, see www.cloninginformation.org.

The National Right to Life Committee is the nation's largest pro-life group with affiliates in all 50 states and over 3,000 chapters nationwide. National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect those lives threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia.