AMA Abandons Medicine's Most Vulnerable Patients

Focus on the Family
Tuesday, 17 June 2003

Pro-Family Organization Decries Embryo-Destroying Research

Focus on the Family's Senior Policy Analyst for Bioethics Carrie Gordon Earll issued the following statement regarding the American Medical Association's (AMA) endorsement of human cloning for stem cell research:

"Delegates to the American Medical Association's annual meeting have abandoned medicine's youngest and most vulnerable patients by endorsing human cloning for embryonic stem cell research. The intentional creation and destruction of human embryos for the sole purpose of extracting stem cells for research crosses all lines of justice, respect and dignity. Young human life warrants more respect than being reduced to research fodder in a laboratory. The AMA's insistence on the destruction of innocent human life is even more egregious when you consider that the actual therapies benefiting patients today are coming from adult stem cells, not embryonic ones.

"The AMA's announcement stresses the importance of informed consent for research subjects and potential recipients; however this obviously does not extend to the human embryos that will be destroyed without their consent. The human embryo — cloned or otherwise — merits from the single-cell stage a moral status reflecting its humanity, and that status precludes dismembering embryos for scientific experiments."

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