David Weldon: “Here again what they are trying to do is change the terminology. They have been losing the debate on this issue with the…”

“Here again what they are trying to do is change the terminology. They have been losing the debate on this issue with the hearts and minds of the American people, so they are now trying to call it somatic cell nuclear transfer rather than embryo cloning or therapeutic cloning. When they called it those things, people understood exactly what it is. But when they say somatic cell nuclear transfer, suddenly people do not know what they are talking about and they may be able to get this thing through. Clearly as a scientist, as a physician, I can tell you that you are talking about creating human embryos, there is no two ways around it, with the potential to develop into a human being. That is not only my opinion; it is the opinion of the Bioethics Advisory Commission. The same commission has a number of members who feel that therapeutic cloning or embryo cloning should be permissible, but they readily recognize that as soon as you take a somatic cell nucleus and put it in an enucleated egg, it involves the creation of an embryo with the apparent potential to be implanted in a uterus and developed to term. It is the procedure used to create Dolly. So to try to say it is not, I think, is misleading. The facts are the facts.”