Hands Off Our Ovaries Connects Women around the World Calling for a Moratorium on Harvesting Women's Eggs for Research; Protests Growing
Concern over health risks to women providing eggs for cloning research -- including the possibility of ovarian cancer -- is so high that a growing global grassroots effort is taking shape seeking to empower women around the world to organize and speak out.
San Ramon, CA (PRWEB) September 30, 2006
Concern over health risks to women providing eggs for cloning research -- including the possibility of ovarian cancer -- is so high that a growing global grassroots effort is taking shape seeking to empower women around the world to organize and speak out.
HandsOff Chair, Diane Beeson, just back from a conference in Korea sponsored by WomenLink said, "Women everywhere, from the US to Korea to Australia, are organizing to demand that their health not be sacrificed in the pursuit of scientific stardom, patents, and the quest for new technologies that may or may not turn out to provide treatments for others." Missouri is a focus for this movement since, come November, citizens there will vote on the state’s stem cell research initiative which enables egg harvesting.
In Korea, women have filed damage claims against the government and Seoul medical centers on behalf of victims of egg extraction who were misled into believing the procedures were safe. Women's health advocates and activists from the US, UK and India gathered in Korea to hear graphic evidence of damage suffered by women undergoing egg extraction. Meanwhile, HandsOff is planning demonstrations in Missouri as well as in Australia, where women are fighting to keep that nation’s ban on cloning in place.
What the current debate fails to clarify is that the proposed cloning research requires women’s eggs -- lots of them. Investigators want to remove the nuclei from women’s eggs and replace them with nuclei from cells taken from those with various diseases. Stem cells derived from the resulting clonal embryos may teach researchers something about disease, possibly suggest cures. The promise of cures may never be realized: no one yet has derived stem cells from a human clonal embryo; those derived from animals are causing tumors. Success is a gamble. Sadly, making women sick is almost a guarantee.
Press Contact:
Diane Beeson (011 510 917 0474)
Josephine Quintavalle ( 0044 207 581 2623)
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