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Urgent! Bill S1471 Reintroduced - Will Be Fast-Tracked.
Contact your State Senator and Two Assembly Members Immediately!
Take Action (here)Bill S1471 was introduced by Senate President Richard Codey and Senator Barbara Buono on 2/27/06. The bill will authorize $150M from cigarette tax revenue bonds by the NJEDA to fund a Stem Cell Institute in New Brunswick, NJ affiliated with the embattled UMDNJ and another $50M for biomedical research facilities in Camden, NJ called the Systems Biology Institute. The Camden facilitiy would be part of the Rutgers-Camden campus and will be associated with the Coriell Institute for Medical Reserach and the Cancer Institute of NJ. According to various reports, the bill will be fast-tracked so immediate action is needed now! You can send a pre-written message to your State Senator and two Assembly members from this page by going to the "Take Action" box.
Please also call your State Senator and two Assembly members without delay and urge them to vote No on S1471. You can get their numbers by calling the Office of Legislative Services at 1-800-792-8630 or going to the NJ Legislature's webpage.
Under NJ law which established the framework for the type of research these facilities are authorized to perform, egregious human rights abuses in the name of medical research will be permitted which include the cloning and killing of human beings through the embryo, fetal, and newborn stages. The bill authorizes cloning through "somatic cell nuclear transplantation," the same process used to clone Dolly the Sheep. Although the bill purports to ban fetal trafficking, it allows "reasonable payment" for the "removal, processsing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transplantation, or implantation of embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue."
Please visit our website and Legislative Action Center here for more information
E-mail the Sponsors of the bill and the Governor
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March 22, 2006
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
The following is an update of NJ Stem Cell Funding Bills.
S1471/A2828 Senate bill authorizes $250M in bonds to build three Stem Cell Institutes; Assembly bill authorizes $200M for same.
On Monday, March 20, the NJ Senate amended S1471 a second time to add technical changes. The bill will most likely be scheduled for a vote in the next Senate Voting Session. The Senate and Assembly bills vary in amounts. The Senate bill, S1471, will borrow $250M in bonds from cigarette tax revenues to build three Stem Cell Institutes; one in New Brunswick, one in Camden and one in Newark. The Assembly bill, A2828, will borrow $200M in bonds from cigarette tax revenues to build the same three Institutes. The Assembly bill, A2828, was released from an Assembly Health Committee and is waiting a hearing before the Assembly Appropriations Committee. If it is released from the Assembly Appropriations Committee, it can be scheduled for a vote in the full Assembly.
NJRTL testified against both of these bills. We made it clear that we support adult stem cell research, but oppose cloning and embryonic and fetal stem cell research and asked the legislature to add language that would limit the funding and the research to adult stem cell research only. Not surprisingly, our request fell on deaf ears. Under previous legislation signed into law by Governor McGreevey in 2003 which established the type of stem cell research to be performed in NJ, researchers are authorized to perform clone and kill research on human embryos and fetuses through the newborn stages. Some lawmakers continue to claim NJ law bans human cloning, but the definition of human cloning used in this law says that the crime of cloning does not occur until the child created through cloning is past or through the newborn stages.
See the following references to cloning and NJ law:
Paul Mulshines May 26, 2005 Star Ledger Column on the NJ law
http://www.njrtl.org/core/newsletter_details.asp?ArticleID=890
Letter to Governor McGreevey from Members of the Presidents Council on Bioethics concerning NJ law
http://njrtl.org/content/newsletter_details.asp?ArticleID=619
Letter from Law Professors analyzing NJ law that authorizes cloning
http://www.njrtl.org/core/newsletter_details.asp?ArticleID=620
NJRTL Op-ed:
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051206/COLUMNISTS/512060387/1004/OPINIONS1091/A1891 The Stem Cell Research Bond Act of 2006
If approved by the legislature and signed by Governor Corzine, this legislation will enable the legislature to place a question on this Novembers election asking NJ voters to approve borrowing $230M in bonds to fund stem cell research. These bills have not yet moved. The legislature and Governor have until the end of August to approve these bills in order for the question to be placed on the ballot in time for this Novembers election. Under previous legislation signed by Governor McGreevey in 2003 which established the type of stem cell research to be performed in NJ, researchers are authorized to perform clone and kill research on human embryos and fetuses through the newborn stages. Some lawmakers continue to claim NJ law bans human cloning, but the definition of human cloning used in this law says the crime of cloning does not occur until the child created through cloning is past or through the newborn stages. See above section for references on cloning.Governor Corzine calls for funding of stem cell research in budget address
I was present in Trenton yesterday to see and hear Governor Corzine give his first budget address. Although the media reported on Corzines call for expansive tax increases, most media sources failed to mention that he also called for long-term borrowing for stem cell research which will increase NJs tax burden. The reaction from the audience to Corzines endorsement of stem cell research funding was noteworthy in that it received a less than enthusiastic applause from an audience that consisted mostly of Corzines cabinet, supporters and legislators.Action Needed:
Both Houses of the Legislature are officially on budget break through the end of April, but that does not mean we should take a break. It does mean that we have more time and additional opportunity to rally opposition in our communities and in our churches to these wrong-headed proposals.
Please continue to call and email your State Senator and two Assembly members and urge them to
vote NO on S1471/A2828. Activate phone, fax and email networks. If you don't know your legislators' phone numbers, you can call the Office of Legislative Services at 1-800-792-8630. You can send a pre-written message to all three state legislators directly from our legislative action center:http://capwiz.com/njrtl/state/main/?state=NJ
or go to www.njrtl.org and click on tab in right hand corner that says, "Legislative Action
Center." Thank you,
Marie Tasy
Executive DirectorWe appreciate your support of our work! To make a contribution, please go to: http://www.njrtl.org/core/newsletter_details.asp?ArticleID=342
Sign up to receive our Action E-List Alerts: http://capwiz.com/njrtl/mlm/signup/