Biotechnology

More than 25 religious and scientific leaders have signed a new "manifesto on biotechnology" that calls for the banning of all human cloning and legislation that will prevent discrimination based on genetic information, according to a Religion News Service story.

"We are thankful for the hope that biotechnology offers of new treatments for some of the most dreaded diseases," says the declaration. "But the same technology can be used for good or ill." Signatories on "The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World: A Manifesto on Biotechnology" include Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson, Focus on the Family President James Dobson and physicians Ben Carson and C. Everett Koop. Other signatories, such as quadriplegic Joni Eareckson Tada, president of Joni and Friends, a ministry to the disabled, supported the use of adult stem cells for research rather than cells from embryos to address possible cures for disease.

"The search for a cure should never compromise the security of human dignity and respect for human life,' she said. "The elderly, infirmed and disabled are exposed and threatened in a society which thinks nothing of creating a class of human beings for the explicit purpose of exploitation."