Advocate Summary

Issue:  Human Cloning
Advocate:  Office of Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) – Rob Wasinger 
Date of Interview: 7/2/02

Basic Background
Daschle tried to bring the bill to a vote in circumstances that would result in a sure defeat. So we brought the amendment forward, Senator Brownback decided we’d use Parliamentary debate to sound the issue.  That amendment gave us about three good days of floor debate, we wanted a vote but mainly wanted some time on the floor. To explain the process and show our charts and flow diagrams and show the myths behind successful cloning. 

Prior Activity on the Issue 
Brownback brought a number of amendments trying to tack them on to numerous bills in the last session of Congress, they were voted not germane. He also brought a bill to ban patenting of cloning as well as the amendment to title 18 of the US code to prohibit human cloning.  

Advocacy Activities Undertaken
Brought bills and amendments to ban cloning, worked to gain support of colleagues, met with interest groups and others at white house meeting on cloning. 

Future Advocacy Activities Planned
It is so locked up in debate right now, it doesn’t seem like it is going anywhere on the federal level, as long as it is locked up here, the states keep passisng bills in the state legislatures with is good. The longer the debate goes on here, the better chance more and more states will pass their own laws. 

We would support a moratorium if it was on both reproductive and what they call therapeutic cloning. If it was a permanent ban on reproductive cloning and like a three year moratorium on therapeutic cloning we wouldn’t support it, it would have to be on both. 

Key Congressional Contact(s)/Champions
Kit Bond (MS) was involved the University of Missouri was involved in the patenting debate, they had a cloning patent in for review. Ensign from Nevada was active. Jim Bunning (R-KY) was more on the side lines, there was also DeWine, Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania, Don Nickles (R-OK), and the Democratic co-sponsor (Mary L.) Landrieu (D-LA) and Hutchinson. 

Targets of Direct Lobbying
None mentioned. 

Targets of Grassroots Lobbying
None mentioned. 

Coalition Partners: Names/Participants
List of groups supporting the Brownback bill in folder. 

The president has been very supportive. Conservative groups are an easy support pool, they signed on right away. And then there are some left leaning groups that have supported us. Andrew Kimbrell and the International Center for Technological Development has been active and Brent Blackwood at Friends of the Earth. And Judy Norsigian in Boston, she’s pretty well known in feminist circles, she wrote something like Our Bodies, Our Selves. And Wesley Smith has also been active. And all of the right to life groups; National Right to Life, Catholic Bishops, Bill Kristol from Stop Human Cloning, we haven’t worked that closely with them, they’ve gone off on their own, they run ads and have been very active. Senator Brownback is supportive of what they do but no working that closely with them. 

Other Participants in the Issue Debate
None mentioned. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence
Pretty much everybody agrees cloning for baby-making is wrong, the polls show 80 to 85 percent of the public against. We feel cloning for an embryo is always wrong. And a lot of the public supports us, 60 to 70 percent of the public still opposed to what people call therapeutic cloning. Therapeutic cloning is essentially cloning your twin just to disembowel it. We think, and the president has used these same words, that it is wrong to create life just to destroy it. 

We also argue that the process exploits women who would have to donate the eggs. There are all these diseases; ALS, Parkinson’s, late onset Diabetes, that say this research could help cure sufferers. But if you took all the people in this country with all those diseases, to cure them you would have to harvest so many eggs. The process is still so inefficient, you need so many eggs to get one viable clone. In one super-ovulatory harvesting you get 20 to 30 eggs at a shot. For all of those diseases then, you would need 110 million women to donate, that’s every woman between the ages of 18 and 25, to donate twice. That’s asking a pretty lot of everywoman in the country. Plus super-ovulatory drugs, which are used in the process, may be linked to cervical cancer. So it could be dangerous. And clinics and labs are paying thousands of dollars for women’s eggs. ACT was paying $4000 and some have paid as much as $10,000. So if you were actually going to use therapeutic cloning, you’d be exploiting women and in particular poor women. It’s one thing for a woman to go through the harvesting process if she wants to do it to have children, for fertility treatment, it’s another to ask women to do it for research, that is unproven at that. 

And there’s no good proof that it will work. In the research by Rudolf Jaenisch, of the White Head Institute, which produced viable cells, he had to take it all the way to birth in mice. He didn’t just inject the nucleus in an egg and get a clone, because the cells at that young stage are so unpredictable, the embryo had to be taken all the way to birth. Then that animal reproduced and the stem cells from the offspring were used to treat the original animal, so they weren’t a genetic match anyway. 

The opposition is arguing for the need to pursue all lines of research for treatments to these diseases. Our argument against that is that there is no need to go that route. It is a novel and unproven therapy even in animal trials. Also studies have shown that clonging still has rejection problems, because the cells, though the nucleic DNA is identical, still have the mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg cell. Adult stem cell research is more promising, studies show that adult cells worked better then embryonic cells. In adult stem cell therapy they treat the adult cell with baths and treatments, depending on the disease to be treated.  Embryonic cells are too unstable, they can go off in any direction. So they will argue the blastocycte will be unstable so they’ll have to take it further along. And that’s just it, that’s what we’re arguing against. In the future they’re going to start saying it needs to go much further into development to work, and that’s what we don’t want. 

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence
Another argument, a paraplegic testified and he said essentially that this is an unproven technology and there is no sense pouring money into research that is not very promising when it could go for other therapies that will actually help people. 

Targeted Arguments, Targets, and Evidence
None mentioned. 

Nature of the Opposition
Mainly the Biotech Industry Organization, Carl Feldblom, who used to work for Senator Arlen Specter is the lead there and also the American Society for Cell Biology and all the disease advocacy groups. 

Ubiquitous Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition 
The opposition is arguing for the need to pursue all lines of research for treatments to these diseases.

Secondary Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition
None mentioned. 

Targeted Argument(s) and Evidence Articulated by the Opposition (and Targets)
None mentioned. 

Described as a Partisan Issue
None mentioned. 

Venue(s) of Activity
Senate

Action Pending or Taken by Relevant Decision Makers
The debate continues in the Senate participants are skeptical any legislation banning cloning will be passed this year. The President’s Council on Bioethics released their final report on cloning on July 11, 2002 which was divided into to opinions, 10 of the 18 expert panel support a four year moratorium on the creation of cloned human embryos and 7 of the 18 calls for research to go forward but with the proper oversight. 

Policy Objective(s) and Support for/Opposition to the Status Quo
Working to ban all forms of human cloning. 

Advocate’s Experience: Tenure in Current Job/Previous Experience
He’s worked for Brownback for 7 years. He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Economics and Philosophy. He worked on embryonic stem cell issue before moving on to the cloning issue. 
He wrote the language for the bill, it took three months and they brought in specialists. 

Reliance on Research: In-House/External (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Number of Individuals Involved in Advocacy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Units in Organization Involved in Public Affairs/Policy (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Advocate’s Outstanding Skills/Assets (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Type of Membership: None, Institutions, Individuals, Both (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Membership Size (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Organizational Age (Code for Organizational Advocates Only)

Miscellaneous