Letter to the Editor

Your view: Opposed to cloning

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Lawful human cloning will be here in Missouri sooner than you think. This week (April 19-23), the House of Representatives will vote on whether or not college and university professors can use private monies to pursue research that includes the techniques of human cloning, abortion and embryonic stem cell experiments.

Despite what pro-cloning and pro-stem cell forces may say, both take a human life. It demeans life by creating new human lives in order to destroy them. Since when has it been moral to take a human life to save or improve the human life of another? Even though Germany's human experiments, the Tuskegee syphilis study and our own government's radiation and experimentation during the Cold War may have brought progress at some questionable technical level, we condemn those actions. We do not look back on those events with a proud sense of accomplishment. Human cloning and stem cell research, which treats human beings as laboratory products who carry cells that others find useful, is just as abominable

Whether or not scientists intend to, every time they clone or create an embryo, they create a soul, the essence of the human being. While these cells are dividing, the soul is dwelling within, patiently waiting for enough functions to express himself/herself. When scientists destroy these cells, they also destroy a human soul. Only those individuals who consider human beings as mere products, as disposable as an old automobile, would consider such actions acceptable. It gets to the heart of how we individually define ourselves.

Please, today, contact Rep. Peter Myers by e-mail: Peter.Myers@house.mo.gov or by phone (573) 751-5471 and urge him to vote no on HB 1409 which would allow college and university professors to use the techniques of human cloning, stem cell research and abortion with private money. Our universities should not be in the business of conducting research that attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life.

Sarah M. Wheeler,

Campbell