Senator Burns,
Please support therapeutic cloning for the sake of those suffering Parkinson's disease and other disorders. The suffering is endless. Costs to taxpayers to support disability is senseless when a cure is at hand.
Realize that: "SCNT (aka `Therapeutic Cloning') is about saving and
improving lives. It is fundamentally different from human reproductive
cloning. In SCNT, the nucleus of a donor's unfertilized egg is removed
and replaced with the nucleus of a patient's own
somatic cells, like a skin, heart, or nerve cells. The goal of SCNT is to
develop stem cells that will not be rejected or destroyed by the patient's
immune system. NO sperm is used in this procedure. The unfertilized cells
are not transplanted into a womb but rather are stored in a petri dish to
become a source of stem cells that can be used to treat life-threatening
medical conditions. SCNT aims to treat or cure patients by creating
tailor-made, genetically identical cells that their bodies won't reject. In
other words, SCNT could allow patients to be cured using their own DNA.
"There are many different kinds of cloning, most of which are commonly used
medical tools. Cloning simply means making copies of a single molecule,
cell, virus or bacterium. Over the last decade, various types of cloning
have allowed scientists and researchers to: Develop powerful new drugs;
Produce insulin and useful bacteria in the lab; Catch criminals and free
innocent people. I, too, along with patient advocacy groups and leading
scientists, including the National Academy of Sciences, and a huge majority
of the American people oppose reproductive cloning, which aims to create
human beings by cloning human embryos.
"But please, don't get the SCNT confused with human reproductive cloning."
Patricia Lewis
PO Box 67 - Boulder MT 59632 USA
406/225-4259
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