On April 10, 2002, President Bush called on the U.S. Senate to approve a total ban on the cloning of human embryos. If the Senate failed to pass the pending Brownback-Landrieu bill, America faced the widespread destruction of nascent human life including the prospect of “human embryo farms”. Senator Tom Daschle, leader of the Democrats supported legislation that would permit the cloning of human embryos.

President Bush lead the effort to defend human life saying, “All of us here today believe in the promise of modern medicine. We’re hopeful about where science may take us. And we’re also here because we believe in the principles of ethical medicine. As we seek to improve human life, we must always preserve human dignity. And therefore, we must prevent human cloning by stopping it before it starts.”…

"We live in a time of tremendous medical progress. “Scientists first cracked the human genetic code—one of the most important advances in scientific history,” and “are developing new diagnostic tools so that each of us can know our risk of disease and act to prevent them.”

“Our age may be known to history as the age of genetic medicine, a time when many of the most feared illnesses were overcome. Our age must also be defined by the care and restraint and responsibility with which we take up these new scientific powers.”

“Advances in biomedical technology must never come at the expense of human conscience. As we seek what is possible, we must always ask what is right, and we must not forget that even the most noble ends do not justify any means.”…

“Human cloning is the laboratory production of individuals who are genetically identical to another human being. Cloning is achieved by putting the genetic material from a donor into a woman’s egg, which has the nucleus removed. As a result, the new or cloned embryo is an identical copy of only the donor.”

“One biotech company has already began producing embryonic human clones for research purposes…. Others have announced plans to produce cloned children, despite the fact that laboratory cloning of animals has lead to spontaneous abortions and terrible, terrible abnormalities.”

“Human cloning is deeply troubling to me, and to most Americans. Life is a creation, not a commodity. Our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured. Allowing cloning would be taking a significant step toward a society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to custom specifications, and that’s not acceptable.” “I believe all human cloning is wrong, and both (reproductive and research cloning) forms of cloning ought to be banned for the follow- ing reasons. First, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be unethical. Research cloning would contradict the most fundamental principle of medical ethics, that no human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another…. Second, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place" " Third, the benefits of research cloning are highly speculative. Advocates of research cloning argue that stem cells obtained from cloned embryos would be injected into a genetically identical individual without risk of tissue rejection. But there is evidence, based on animal studies, that cells derived from cloned embryos may indeed be rejected.”…

“The National Institutes of Health is funding a broad range of animal and human adult stem cell research. Adult stem cells which do not require the destruction of human embryos... yield tissues which can be transplanted without rejection..... Therapies developed from adult stem cells are already helping suffering people.”

“I support increasing the research budget at NIH, and I ask Congress to join me in that support. I strongly support a compre-hensive law against all human cloning, and I endorse the bill—wholeheartedly endorse the bill— sponsored by Senator Brownback and Senator Mary Landrieu.”