Jefferson City, Mo., Feb 13, 2006 / 22:00 pm
Senator Jim Talent (R-Missouri) withdrew his name Feb. 10 as a cosponsor of the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, SB 658, saying he did not want a human cloning ban to impede newly emerging technologies.
The Missouri Catholic Conference in urging the senator to reconsider his new position.
“Senator Talent was elected on the basis that he supported a ban on human cloning,” Deacon Larry Weber, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, pointed out.
The senator had come under fire in recent months from cloning supporters.
Talent now claims that banning human cloning through somatic cell nuclear transfer, the same method used in cloning Dolly the sheep, might impede research on a new procedure called altered nuclear transfer, in which a cloned human embryo is created but is genetically modified to prevent growth beyond a certain stage.