Ohio Senate OKs Ban on Human-Animal Hybrid Cloning Pro-Life Groups Back
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 2, 2010
Columbus, OH (LifeNews.com) — The Ohio state Senate has approved a bill supported by pro-life groups that would ban human cloning and human-animal hybrids. The legislation is based on similar bans in Louisiana and Arizona.
Ohio Christian Alliance president Chris Long talked more about the vote.
"For the past seven years, OCA has been working tirelessly with members of the Ohio Legislature to ban embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, and in recent years, animal-human hybrid," he told LifeNews.com. "Science has advanced to the point where DNA from animals and humans can be intermixed in scientific laboratory experimentation."
"Animal-human hybrid research is currently being conducted in England, which many in the international medical community now consider to be a rogue medical state," he continued. "It is unknown how many U.S. laboratories are currently conducting similar research. Our office has been working with State Senator Steve Buehrer and other members of the Ohio Senate for the past three years to introduce this legislation."
David Prentice of the Family Research Council also weighed in on the vote.
"Creating ‘experimental humans’ through nuclear transfer cloning or as animal-human hybrids is an unethical use of science, and will not lead to useful medical treatments for patients," he said. "The focus should be on ethical and successful research that puts the patients first."
The pro-life groups say a process that knowingly encourages human life to be created, manipulated for research, and ultimately destroyed is immoral and should be prohibited.
The research facilities in this state that did not oppose this legislation concur by their actions that ethical guidelines in the field of science do exist and that there are barriers that should not be breached, Long said.
"All who believe that human life, including nascent human life, is a unique and precious gift from our Creator have an obligation to support efforts to ban it," Long added.
Mark Harrington of the Center for Bio Ethical Reform and Paula Westwood of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati have also been supporting the bill as has Ohio Right to Life.
Westwood said, "Despite the fact that simply the desire to genetically mix humans with animals is morally abhorrent, and such experimentation kills human life, the only dangerous principle some scientists appear to be operating under is, ‘If we can, we will.’"
On the other side, James Wells from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and the University of Cincinnati, and Tony Dennis of BioOhio, argued against the measure in committee.
They said the bills would hurt Ohio in its ability to attract some of the brightest minds in the scientific community.
In June of last year, pro-abortion Gov. Ted Strickland upset pro-life Ohio residents by using his line-item veto to axe the section of the $1.3 billion funding bill banning state funds for cloning human beings. https://www.lifenews.com/bio2481.html
Mike Gonidakis, the director of Ohio Right to Life, told LifeNews.com at the time, “By vetoing a ban on using taxpayer funds for human cloning, Ted Strickland has demonstrated that he supports treating human life as a commodity."
"Most Ohioans don’t share Governor Strickland’s cavalier disregard for the value of human life and they should not be forced to pay for its creation, exploitation and destruction in cloning research,” Gonidakis said.
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