1. The Fetus Farming Prohibition Act of 2006 (S. 3504) — RNC/Life Supports This Bill which is intended to prevent scientists from aborting human babies at four or five months gestation in order to "harvest" their organs and other body parts for transplantation. The July 10 edition of Life Advocacy Briefing quotes National Right to Life Committee in this regard: "Some researchers have already conducted such 'fetus farming' experiments with animals — for example, by gestating cloned calves to four months and then aborting them to obtain their kidney and heart tissues for transplantation." In the absence of ethical principles among many in today’s scientific research community, it is imperative that such heretofore unimaginable practices be outlawed before they attempt it on human babies. After the fact, it will be too late.

2. Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act (S.2754) — RNC/Life Opposes This Bill because of concerns that have been raised by respected colleagues about whether, as its sponsors claim, it would fund research that some claim might lead to the development pluripotent stem cells (embryonic cells that are highly versatile and can give rise to almost any cell type). Serious questions exist as to whether this can be done without engendering a human embryo. At the very least, support for this legislation may lead to the unintended consequence of encouraging the pursuit of embryonic stem cell research. Although the bill does fund adult, or non-embryonic stem cell research, columnist Robert Novak (Evans-Novak Political Report, 7/12/2006) has pointed out that “conservatives find it [the bill] problematic because it leaves the definition of 'embryo' up to the language in each year’s Health and Human Services appropriations bill. If Democrats retake either house of Congress this year — still a strong possibility — then this bill could be viewed in retrospect as a mistake.”

3. Taxpayer Funding for Human Embryo Experimentation (H.R. 810) — RNC/Life Opposes This Bill which would expand taxpayer funding for research involving the killing of human embryos.

In 2001, President Bush established a policy designed to prevent the killing of embryos for research on cells that had been derived from embryos killed prior to August 9, 2001, and prohibited funding of research on embryonic cells derived after that date. While his policy does not affect privately funded research on embryos, we must not allow it to be expanded beyond its original intent.

H.R. 810 would force us, the taxpayers, into complicity with the taking of innocent human life. Its supporters ignore the fact that absolutely no benefit to any person has come from embryonic stem cell research. Instead, many thousands of patients have benefited from advances in treatments using non-embryonic stem cells, for example, successful therapies have treated or cured patients with heart disease, incontinence, genetic metabolic diseases, nerve regeneration, respiratory conditions, anemias and other blood conditions, auto-immune diseases, bladder disease, cancers, immunodeficiencies, liver disease, neural degenerative diseases and injuries, corneal regeneration, wounds and injuries, and other metabolic disorders, some of which are hereditary.

FaxNotes will resume after August 1, 2006