New Congressman votes against Cloning

Iowa’s new congressman has voted to ban human cloning. Republican Steve King, who represents the western Iowa congressional district, says the bill that cleared the U-S House Judiciary Committee also bans the creation of new human stem cells for medical research. He says he believes live begins at the moment of conception or inception in the case of cloning, and he says it’s an innocent human life at the moment that happens.The bill would allow research with existing stem cell lines and “cloning technology” that produces “non-human” embryos. King says there are some researchers who are in the business of creating life in a petrie dish with the sole purpose of killing it, and the bill would ban that. He says life should be protected in all forms, but he says he’s for all forms of science, unless it takes human life.King isn’t worried about the recent announcement by the “Raelien” group that they’d cloned a baby. King, though, says it’s inevitable that there’ll be clones walking around the streets of America, and he says there’ll be a significant number of human clones within 10 years. The ban on human cloning cleared the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on a 19 to 12 vote. King is the only Iowa Congressman serving on that panel.