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Hello Bob, I have been in the trenches of the "stem cell wars" for a long time now. One of the "weapons" of people who favor this research is, indeed, a petition such as the one you're proposing. (Perhaps I shouldn't use these military metaphors. But that's rather in keeping with the times. And I believe that the "battle" to find a cure for conditions like Parkinson's is as important as -- and might have more humane consequences than -- any other one that we fight.) Bob, I'm happy to give you several versions of a petition, which you might wish to adapt to your purposes. Here is a version of an early petition that we circulated: We believe that biotechnology should be placed in the service of humane ends. Therefore we oppose legislation currently being considered in the U.S. Congress that would criminalize research that clones human embryonic stem cells for therapeutic purposes. Nor should Congress impose a moratorium on this research, which would halt the advances that are currently being made. We support this research, because its laudable aim is to develop new remedies for severe childhood and adult illnesses that afflict millions of people. We also wrote a somewhat more complicated, but also more comprehensive petition. to see this petition, please visit http://www.sabr.us and click in the left panel on "Medical School Petition." This petition's wording includes the usefulness of stem cell research, including therapeutic cloning, for understanding the origins and development of all diseases that have a genetic component. By way of brief explanation: for any such disease, ranging from cancer to sickle cell anemia to heart disease, we could take adult cells from an adult person (someone who has one of these illnesses), create stem cells from them, and then study the development of these cells in the laboratory. That would tell us a lot about how these diseases get underway. Here's the way our more complex petition reads: Petition Opposing the Criminalization of Therapeutic Cloning We the undersigned oppose legislation currently being considered in the U.S. Congress that would criminalize SCNT research to produce human disease-specific embryonic stem cells for research or normal embryonic stem cells for therapeutic purposes. Nor should Congress impose a moratorium on this research, which would halt the advances that are currently being made. The laudable aim of this research is the production of disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines to understand how these diseases develop, and therapeutic cloning whose purpose is to develop new remedies for severe childhood and adult illnesses that afflict millions of people. This petition was signed by nearly 2200 medical school educators and scientists, including a good number from New Jersey. You can find their names posted at: http://www.barglow.com/sigpage-new-petition.htm You might want to contact some of these people in New Jersey -- I can help you to do this. Good luck Bob, and let me know if you have further questions. By the way, please contribute a portrait to our "Portraits of Hope" project. And ask everyone in your group to do the same. (Dear people in this discussion group who have not yet posted a portrait: I ask that you too consider this request.) This project aims to put a human face on the need for stem cell research. See: http://www.sabr.us/portraits.htm Best wishes, Raymond Barglow, Ph.D. ******************** On Monday, Mar 31, 2003, at 08:10 Europe/Paris, Bob Monacci wrote: > I am a member of a PD Support Group in Lawrenceville NJ. We want to > draw up a petition supporting therapeutic cloning and stem cell > research and send it to our Congressmen and President Bush. Does > anyone have a sample we could use to save us time? If so please > forward to [log in to unmask] Bob M. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: > mailto:[log in to unmask] > In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn