Hollywood Enters The Debate In Favor Of Human Cloning



Hollywood, CA — A group of Hollywood moms has resurrected the “Harry and Louise” television ad characters as part of a campaign to allow cloning for research. The television ads, running in Washington and Utah, aim to influence the Senate's upcoming debate on whether or not to ban human cloning. Supporters hope to see the ads go nationwide in coming weeks.

The ads join television and radio spots sponsored by Stop Human Cloning and the National Right to Life Committee that have been running in several states.

The entertainment industry group is using the same “Harry and Louise” characters that were credited with helping defeat the Clinton administration's health care plan in 1994.

“There have been a number of ads running across the country that have been placed by the far right,” said Janet Zucker, a co-founder of the group CuresNow and, most recently, producer of the comedy “Rat Race.” “We feel a need that we must reply.”

Lucy Fisher, a former vice chairman of Sony Entertainment whose production credits include “Gladiator” and “Spy Game,” said, “How can we explain to our children that our government is now the greatest obstacle to a cure for their disease?”

Both Fisher and Zucker have daughters with juvenile diabetes. Zucker's husband, Jerry — the director of “Ghost” and producer of “The Naked Gun” and “My Best Friend's Wedding” directed the television ads.

The Senate will soon consider a ban on all human cloning offered by Senators. Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA).

Many, including CuresNow, argue that the bill should outlaw reproductive cloning but allow so-called therapeutic cloning. Such cloning would involve the destruction of human embryos for research purposes.

“Don't tell us you have the right to take away our cures and our rights,” Fisher claims.

Wednesday, opponents of cloning for research called the group's ads misleading. “What they are trying to do is say, 'Well, it's not cloning. It's not a human’” said Brownback. “When you follow this through, it's a human.”

“Harry” asks, “Is it cloning?” to which “Louise” responds, “Nooo …uses an unfertilized egg and a skin cell.”

Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, called the ads a “brazen deception.”

“These Hollywood manipulators know it,” Johnson said. “Panels of scientific experts at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere have agreed that the procedure that the Brownback bill would ban for humans [somatic cell nuclear transfer] is indeed 'cloning' and will indeed produce a 'human embryo.'”

A sampling of those authorities — including citations from an article by leading U.S. cloning researchers in the Journal of the American Medical Association are collected on the NRLC website.

Johnson noted that the magazine “New Scientist” published an editorial in its Feb. 23, 2002 issue, deploring such “shifty” tactics, and concluding, “Here at New Scientist we will continue to call a clone a clone.”

Moreover, press releases, background papers, and ads released today by the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), also opposing the Brownback-Landrieu bill, repeatedly and explicitly refer to “somatic cell nuclear transfer” as “therapeutic cloning.” Example: “SCNT, also known as therapeutic cloning . . .” While the term “therapeutic” is itself misleading in this context (“research cloning” is a more accurate and neutral term), at least CAMR admits that cloning is the issue. CuresNow is a member of CAMR, but CAMR's own materials refute Louise's misinformation.

The Health Insurance Association of America, which sponsored the earlier “Harry and Louise” ads, issued a statement saying it has “no involvement in the current advertising campaign and does not support or condone it.”

“Frankly, we were disappointed to learn that characters so closely associated with HIAA are now being used in other ways without our foreknowledge and without our permission,” said HIAA president Donald Young.

The organization did not trademark the “Harry and Louise” name, and the actors — Harry Johnson and Louise Caire Clark — were only under contract for two years after the commercials appeared.

The new ads were produced by Goddard-Claussen, the same firm that created the original “Harry and Louise” campaign.

For more articles like this, see The Associated Press

(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)

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