From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Fri Dec 17 1999 - 09:30:58 MST
>From The Marantha Christian Journal,
http://www.mcjonline.com/news/news3701.htm
-
Top News Headlines December 16, 1999 -- 11:24 pm
Groups Continue To Protest Human Cloning Research
MENLO PARK, CA (MCNS) -- A little before 10 in the morning the manager of a
neighboring office building is covering his corporate sign with a blanket
and a cardboard box to conceal it from TV news cameras. Police are busy
blocking off one side of the street with barricades and cones as news trucks
jockey for the most advantageous parking spot. Car after car drops off their
passengers who greet one another like relatives arriving at a family
wedding. Signs are unloaded from a trailer and casually handed out.
This is a protest. But one in stark contrast to the riotous behavior just
concluding in Seattle. Here, fifty or so demonstrators assemble in a line in
front of a one-story building in Menlo Park they claim does human stem-cell
research, otherwise known as human cloning.
This demonstration is in front of the Geron Corporation. Signs held by the
fifty participants read: "Stop cloning to kill," "Stem cell research
destroys a life," and "Geron destroys babies in the name of science." The
accusation of the protestors is that Geron is cloning humans and destroying
the human clones while in the embryonic stage, less than a month old.
One of those leading the demonstration is Troy Newman is the director of
Operation Rescue West (ORW), well known for abortion clinic blockades.
Newman says, "Besides cloning humans, Geron is buying body parts from
aborted children to experiment on. Just look at Geron's website."
Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington DC based Christian Defense
Coalition, is the other organizer of this event. Mahoney says this protest
is part of an 18-month plan to see human cloning made illegal. "We are
pursuing state and federal legislation simultaneously." States Mahoney, "Our
goal is to educate the public and introduce legislation to see the barbaric
practice of cloning humans stopped and to prohibit the sale of body parts
from aborted children."
This particular protest comes one day after the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) said it is reviewing its policy as to what level of federal
funding will be legal in regard to cloning humans. The NIH is seeking public
comment for the next 60 days on what the guidelines should be for human
cloning research using tax dollars. Newman says their protest is the first
"public comment."
On March 5, 1997, President Clinton banned the use of federal funds for the
laboratory creation of human embryos to be harvested for medical purposes.
But the protestors claim the human cloning currently being done by the Geron
Corporation of Menlo Park, California and Advance Cell Technologies (ACT) of
Worcester, Massachusetts is privately funded. Geron and ACT are the only
companies known to be cloning humans in the US.
At a rally that evening, Mahoney told the crowd, "God has given us an
opportunity to address the issue of abortion on our terms. When we confront
those who are cloning humans and killing them at 21 days old, we are dealing
with the essence of abortion. For the first time the debate is squarely
focused on the undeniable humanity of this small but fully-human child."
Geron representatives says their work is research on how humans age and
age-related illnesses, and that they are not cloning humans. Newman points
out that Geron simply does not regard the embryo as human life because it is
disposed of while still a fetus.
The following day the group took their signs to a busy intersection in Menlo
Park. The protestors held a mixture of pro-life and anti-cloning signs,
while eight police officers walked casually in and around the demonstrators.
In the middle of the line of signs, a counter-demonstration of three held
signs containing messages defending abortion and attacking Operation Rescue.
At 11:30 AM, a car swerved toward the demonstrators and a passenger threw
coffee on them. On a second swerve the car hopped the curb and sideswiped a
protestor, Ken Reed, who was holding a large photograph of an aborted baby.
A Menlo Park police office saw the incident and gave chase on foot and got
the license plate number.
Two days later Menlo Park police found the driver and passenger who readily
admitted to hit and run and reportedly asked, "Does this mean our names are
going to be in the paper?" The police will release a report on the incident
on Friday, December 10. Reed's attorney said this attack should be treated
as a hate crime.
In August Mahoney led a similar protest in front of ACT, just outside of
Boston. Mahoney says they will continue to demonstrate at Geron and ACT, or
any other company that decides to clone humans. In addition to the protests
they plan to lobby state legislators to outlaw human cloning, starting with
Louisiana, Alabama, and Idaho.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:06:06 MST