WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Chris Smith (R-Hamilton), Chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, issued the following statement today on reports that human embryos have been cloned in South Korea.

            “We will all suffer if this type of human experimentation is allowed to go forward.  Humans are not guinea pigs.  Creating human beings solely for the purpose of destroying them in an experiment is sick in the extreme.

            “These experimenters exploited women to harvest 242 eggs, created hundreds of human embryos, developed 30 of those human embryos for a week, and callously tore apart those embryos to use their spare parts to create one stem cell line.  Just as we said would happen in the process of human cloning for research, women and human embryos were treated as commodities in this experiment.

            “Senator Hatch and others in the U.S. Senate need to stop blocking a total ban on human cloning so we can proceed to protect the dignity of human life. We also need an international ban on human cloning.   There is no reason to create human life to destroy it when adult and cord blood stem cells are accessible and are being successfully used to treat human patients.

            “Mad scientists are still mad scientists no matter how white their lab coats and how many bioethicists, lobbyists, and celebrities hawk their wares.”