David Weldon: “I just want to clarify a few things about my legislation. It is a pretty short bill. It has four pages and I would…”

“I just want to clarify a few things about my legislation. It is a pretty short bill. It has four pages and I would encourage anybody who has any uncertainty about this issue to take the time to read it. I specifically want to refer them to section 302(d). It says, under Scientific Research, nothing in this section restricts areas of scientific research not specifically prohibited by this section. What they are talking about there is somatic cell nuclear transfer to create an embryo as was used to create Dolly. I go on in this section to say, nothing specifically prohibiting, including research in 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. Basically what this means is all the scientific research that is currently going on today can continue. What cannot continue is what people want to start doing now. It is not being done, but they want to start doing it; and that is to create cloned human embryos for the purpose of research. Now, there are people putting forward this notion that if we were able to go ahead with this, all these huge breakthroughs would occur. I want to reiterate, I am a doctor. I just saw patients a week ago. I have treated all these diseases. I have reviewed the medical literature. It is real pie in the sky to say there are going to be all these huge breakthroughs.”