Topeka ? A human cloning ban in Kansas will have to wait another year, after opponents of the measure told a legislative committee Wednesday the measure would go much further and halt potentially life-saving research.

“The implications of this bill are significant, and to go rushing to judgment would be imprudent,” said state Rep. John Edmonds, a Republican from Great Bend who is chairman of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee.

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway said he agreed with Edmonds.

“This probably deserves more discussion and analysis than what is remaining this session,” he said.

Jeanne Gawdun of Kansans for Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, said she was disappointed in Edmonds’ position.

“It’s a very important bill which has widespread support in Kansas,” she said.

Edmonds’ comments followed a dramatic 1 1/2-hour public hearing where KU officials testified against the bill.

“It would put us at risk of losing our scientists,” said Dr. Barbara Atkinson, executive vice chancellor of the Kansas University Medical Center. “People would see Kansas as a place where people don’t go to do science.”

Human life?

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The measure, House Bill 2355, would prohibit human cloning. The dispute Wednesday was over the bill’s definition of cloning.

The definition would also ban what is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which is commonly called “therapeutic cloning” or referred to by its acronym, SCNT.

The process transplants DNA into an unfertilized egg to grow stem cells, which are primitive cells that can develop into other types of cells under certain conditions. Researches say that some day this process could be used to treat various diseases and repair damaged organs.

Supporters of the bill say the result of SCNT is human life, because the cells could develop further if implanted in a uterus.

Chelsea Zimmerman, 22, of Holts Summit, Mo., said even though she is paralyzed from the chest down from a car accident, she would not want to benefit from any research that used SCNT.

“If we can justify the destruction of human life in its most vulnerable stages, where does it end?” she asked. “I would love to walk again, to regain control of my bodily functions. But I could never accept the harvesting of another human life, no matter how small, for my own comfort.”

But Rick Lucas, a Presbyterian minister from Overland Park, who is suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, said the bill would kill hope for thousands of Kansans.

“It will ban they very research that can save our lives,” he said.

‘Cloning is cloning’

Scientists said SCNT did not represent human life because the generated cells don’t come from the fertilization of an egg by a sperm.

“It does not represent a newly conceived life,” William Neaves, president and chief executive of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, said. “It has been cultured in a lab dish from an ordinary body cell of an already-living person conceived years ago.”

Neaves said he respected people who believe SCNT is already a person, but he said banning the research “would be comparable to outlawing blood transfusions because some Christians believe it’s wrong.”

But Wesley Smith, an author and critic of stem cell research from California, said the process was human cloning.

“Cloning is cloning is cloning. Cloning creates human life for the purpose of destroying human life,” he said.

“It kind of reminds me of Frankenstein’s lab,” state Rep. Bonnie Huy, R-Wichita, said.

But Atkinson disagreed.

“This produces cells in a petri dish. I see this as a mass of cells not as human life,” she said.

She said that is far different than trying to clone a human being, which, Atkinson added, she and every reputable scientist in the United States agree should be banned.