Testimony Before the Illinois Legislature on State Funding of Human Cloning

by Sarah J. Flashing, M.A., former Director of Communications at The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity

I am Sarah J. Flashing, Director of Communications at The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity in Bannockburn, IL. I have been invited to speak with you about human cloning and how this research directly impacts women during their reproductive years.

At this time, I’d like to follow up on what has already presented to you by my colleague, Joe Carter.

Recently, it has become clear that Americans share a common concern for the health and exploitation of the young disadvantaged women who are the primary source for eggs, without which, human cloning could not even be pursued. Women have a reason to be concerned about the implication of human cloning on their health and the way in which society views them. Those of us with knowledge of the facts have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable.

Because of the efforts to advance this area of research, there is a growing demand for human egg donations, even with the real risk this procedure poses to the health of women. With the knowledge of how many eggs are necessary to simply address one disease, pressure will increase to accelerate the collection of eggs through multiple egg extraction.

Feminist author Judy Norsigian says that what is missing from the current human cloning debates “is any discussion of the thousands of women who will need to undergo egg extraction procedures for such embryo cloning. A primary concern is the substantial risks to women's health posed by the extraction procedure and the inability to obtain true informed consent from egg donors given the current lack of adequate safety data.”

Advertisements for egg donors are becoming quite common. Young disenfranchised women are enticed to undergo egg extractions by compensations that range from $4,000-7,000 per extraction. Poor minority women are especially at risk of being targeted to sell their eggs because the minimal financial compensation is attractive, but to the exclusion of any necessary long-term health care that might be needed as a result of hyper-stimulating the ovaries.

Human cloning also objectifies women by treating them as lab rats. Because women are misled into believing that cures are immanent and that they will be able to enjoy the benefits of the research, they are subjecting themselves to research that no doctor would ever recommend for them. The real truth is that no cures are imminent and the suffering of thousands of women is necessary in the pursuit of hypothetical cures.

In American history, similar injustices in medical research have occurred all too often. The Tuskeegee Syphilis Study is one most egregious examples of people being misled into believing that they were going to be helped, when in fact, they were being treated as nothing more than objects for research. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had "bad blood" and could receive free treatment. Tuskeegee is a blemish on the record of medical research ethics in America, one of the greatest ethical breaches of trust. So, too, will be the human cloning project should it ensue. We must work at protecting women from the abuses of unethical research. CBHD