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:
Times New Roman0A6C,0A6C,0A6CWe
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.0A6C,0A6C,0A6C
Times New RomanWe 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.
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To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to:
mailto:[log in to unmask]
In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn
