Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Speaker, I will be blunt: This is a bad bill and a bad rule. This is Congress again playing scientist, and I urge…”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be blunt: This is a bad bill and a bad rule. This is Congress again playing scientist, and I urge defeat of the rule and defeat of the underlying bill in its current form. In its efforts to address the issue of human cloning, my colleague, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) has managed to duplicate the controversy arising from the administration's debate over whether to ban federally funded stem cell research. Mr. Speaker, there is a strong consensus in Congress that the cloning of human beings should be prohibited. For many people, the prospect of human cloning raises a specter of eugenics and genetic manipulation of traits like eye color or intelligence, and none of us want to see these types of abuses. Yet H.R. 2505 and its excessive fear of science and the possibilities of scientific research attempts to deprive the American people of their hope for cures and their faith in the power of human discovery. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act goes far beyond a ban on cloning of an individual known as reproductive cloning. This legislation actually also bans stem cell research and, finally, would prohibit the importation of products that are developed through this kind of research. As a former scientist, I am profoundly concerned about the impact this proposal would have on our Nation's biotechnical industry.”