Therapeutic cloning techniques are central to the production of breakthrough medicines, diagnostics and vaccines to treat Alzheimer s, diabetes, Parkinson s, heart attacks, various cancers and hundreds of other genetic diseases. Therapeutic cloning could also produce replacement skin, cartilage and bone tissue for burn and accident victims and bring us ways to regenerate retinal and spinal cord tissue. Therapeutic cloning cannot produce a whole human being. This work should be allowed to move forward. Allow me a minute or two to explain how therapeutic cloning can be used to develop products that will greatly improve the practice of medicine and, in turn, enormously improve the quality of life of individuals suffering from many of the most serious illnesses known to human kind.
Many diseases disrupt cellular function or destroy tissue.
Heart attacks, strokes and diabetes are examples of common conditions in which critical cells are lost to disease. Today s medicine cannot completely restore this function. Regenerative medicine holds the potential to cause an individual s malfunctioning cells to work properly again or even to replace dead or irreparably damaged cells with fresh, healthy ones, thereby restoring organ function. The goal is to provide cells that won t be rejected when they are transplanted into the body. Therapeutic cloning technology can create pure populations of functional cells to replace damaged cells in the human body.