Obama Order Opens Door to Widespread Killing of
Embryonic Humans in Government-Funded Research

WASHINGTON – In a White House ceremony today, President Barack Obama signed an executive order to allow federal funding of research that will require the killing of human embryos.

This order reverses a policy instituted by former President George W. Bush in August 2001, which funded research on already-existing stem cell lines without encouraging any further destruction of human life.

"It is a sad day when the federal government will fund research that exploits living members of the human species as raw material for research," said Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee. "Obama's order also places our society on a very steep, very slippery slope. Many researchers will not be satisfied to use only so-called surplus embryos. Many researchers are already demanding federal support for research in which human embryos would be created for the specific purpose of research, through human cloning and other methods, and there was nothing in the President's remarks today to limit NIH to the use of so-called surplus embryos created in IVF clinics.

"This sets the stage for an attack on the Dickey-Wicker law, which since 1995 has been a provision of the annual appropriations bills for federal health programs. This law prohibits federal funding of 'the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death . . .' Any member of Congress who votes for legislation to repeal this law is voting to allow federal funding of human embryo farms, created through the use of human cloning."
Full story here at National Right to Life:
http://www.nrlc.org/press_releases_n...ase030909.html