The following news release was issued on June 2, 2009.
MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) has called on the University of Minnesota to cease its pursuit of human cloning and to end its violation of state law through its ongoing destruction of human embryos. The MCCL statement is in response to a letter in which the University accuses the state’s oldest and largest pro-life organization of not telling the truth about the University’s cloning and embryo-killing experiments.
“MCCL’s statements regarding the University of Minnesota’s pursuit of human cloning and its embryo-destructive research have always been accurate,” said Scott Fischbach, MCCL Executive Director. “The University’s letter only serves to highlight its own dishonest portrayal of its efforts to clone human beings.”
The University’s Wendy Burt, Academic Health Center director of public and community affairs, said recent MCCL news releases in question were “absolutely false” in stating that the University’s “Stem Cell Institute is believed to be pursuing human cloning for research purposes.” The MCCL news releases discussed state legislation to ban taxpayer funding of human cloning at the University. Dr. Frank Cerra, the University’s senior vice president for health sciences, wrote in an April 21, 2009, letter to Sen. Sandy Pappas: “This bill will stifle important and ongoing University of Minnesota research” (emphasis added). Cerra testified in a Higher Education Conference Committee meeting on May 4, 2009, that “therapeutic cloning … is really at the core of much of the work we do.” He also said that “therapeutic cloning has great value.”
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