Badpuppy Gay Today

Wednesday, 19 March, 1997

After picketing outside the New York State Senate Investigations Committee hearing in Manhattan from which it had originally been excluded, CRUF (Clone Rights United Front) was invited into the meeting and its public relations director, Randolfe Wicker, also a pioneering gay activist, testified, calling for support for human cloning with agreeable scientists and ethicists as well as powerful cloning opponents like John Cardinal O'Connor.

"A top-notch scientist, a Nobel winner, was busy testifying when Cardinal O'Connor arrived," Wicker told GayToday, "and this scientist was interrupted when it was announced with a hush of wonder that "His Eminence" the cardinal, was on his way into the hearing room. "It was amazing," said Wicker, "seeing the celebrity status this religious representative had, weighing in so heavily against top-name scientists."

Among prominent scientists who supported cloning research was Princeton University's Professor of Molecular Biology, Dr. Lee M. Silver. "The incredible thing about this technology," said Dr. Silver, "is the simplicity of its use. It requires only equipment and facilities that are already standard, or easy to obtain by biomedical laboratories and free-standing in vitro fertilization clinics across the country." Dr. Silver likened human cloning to nature's production of twins. "The only biological difference between natural twinning and the cloning process...is that intentional cloning could lead to the birth of a twin many years after the original twin was born." Silver offered two arguments about the positive sides of cloning, one involving medical benefits and a second raised on behalf of childless couples.

Cardinal O'Connor presented what New York's Daily News called "an apocalyptic vision" foreseeing clones as drones or slaves. The Cardinal gave support to the Marchi bill, sponsored by New York State senator Marchi of Staten Island, recommending up to seven years imprisonment for the "crime" of human cloning research. Following Senate cloning hearings in Washington, D.C., however, and, perhaps, after giving further consideration to the weight of scientific opinion, Senator Marchi withdrew his proposed legislation.

Wicker's band of cloning rights supporters were photographed by the Daily News (March 14) and by two New York television news stations that captured CRUF's director at the very podium where he presented his "Clone Bill of Rights." Opening statements were made by State Senator Roy M. Goodman, who placed Wicker, who'd expected to testify last, first on the podium. The CRUF representative later said most of the scientists had relieved his anxieties, carefully walking toward the horizons of research.

Cardinal O'Connor hoped, he reported, that cloning research would merely approach the threshold of human cloning and then stop. Nobel winner Joshua Lederberg of Rockefeller University said a ban would be "clumsy, heavy-handed and unenforceable."