To the editor:

As the parent of a child with a severe muscle-wasting disease, I am dismayed by the actions of one of our state’s U.S. senators, Sam Brownback.

Research in therapeutic cloning of muscle tissue has the potential to help my child live a more normal life, but Sen. Brownback has proposed legislation to criminalize such research. Therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, is not the same as cloning a human being, which I, like most Americans, find morally repugnant. Therapeutic cloning has the potential for helping millions who suffer from debilitating, often deadly diseases including the muscular dystrophies, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, Parkinson’s and spinal cord injury.

Former President Gerald Ford, in a June 5 editorial opinion in The Washington Post, comes down hard on the Brownback bill. President Ford commented that those with Alzheimer’s and other diseases “deserve the finest treatment imaginable by the world’s best scientists. Unfortunately they may not get it. Under terms of the Brownback-Landrieu bill in the Senate, and its House counterpart, H.R. 2505, promising regenerative therapies would be criminalized. This … is slamming the door to lifesaving cures and treatments merely because they are new. No fewer than 40 Nobel laureates have warned that such legislation would … impede progress against some of the most debilitating diseases known to man.”

Ford adds that if U.S. scientists walk away from this area of research, America will lose its chance to influence the worldwide debate over these amazing new discoveries.

The Brownback-Landrieu bill is a giant step backward.

Susan Pogany,

Lawrence