SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 1312 words

COMMITTEE: HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE

SUBCOMMITTEE: HEALTH

HEADLINE: PROHIBITON ON HUMAN CLONING

TESTIMONY-BY: STUART NEWMAN, PROFESSOR OF CELL BIOLOGY AND ANATOMY

AFFILIATION: NEW YORK MEDICAL COLLEGE

BODY:
June 20, 2001 CORRECTED COPY

Prepared Witness Testimony The Committee on Energy and Commerce W.J. "Billy Tauzin" Chairman

H.R. 1644, Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001, and H.R.____, Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001

Subcommittee on Health

Dr. Stuart Newman Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy New York Medical College Basic Sciences Building Valhalla, NY, 10595

My name is Stuart Newman. I have been a professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at New York Medical College since 1979, where I teach medical and graduate students and direct a laboratory in developmental biology. This is the scientific field that studies embryo development, cloning, regeneration, and stem cells. My work on the development of the skeletal system in animal embryos has been supported over the past 25 years by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. I am currently the recipient of two Federal grants. Since my student days I have also been concerned with the uses to which scientific research is put. My doctoral research in chemistry at the University of Chicago was conducted at the James Franck Institute. Professor James Franck was a Nobel prize winning atomic physicist who was the principal author of the May 1945 Franck Report. This document anticipated the horrors of nuclear weapons and was the first call by scientists for international controls over these weapons. The Franck report was a landmark in scientific responsibility and its message ultimately prevailed.

Having become convinced that scientists, who are beneficiaries of public resources, have a deep responsibility to anticipate what lies down the road in their own fields and to themselves act as a resource for the public on the complex issues around applications of scientific research, I joined with other scientists, social scientists, feminists and community advocates to found the Council for Responsible Genetics in the late 1970s. The Council is now the Nation's oldest organization scrutinizing and interpreting the new genetic technologies, and has worked for protecting genetic privacy, ending genetic discrimination, exercising caution on the development and dissemination of genetically engineered crops, banning biological weapons, and banning the introduction of inheritable genetic modifications into humans. This last issue relates to my own field of expertise. Over the past quarter century I have seen laboratory findings such as virus-based gene therapies and implantation of fetal tissues employed prematurely or inappropriately in humans through a process that while often having noble motivations has also been mixed with appreciable amounts of wishful thinking, hype and greed.

Last year the Council issued the Genetic Bill of Rights (appended) which touches on all the above issues. The last of the ten listed Rights states:

All people have the right to have been conceived, gestated, and born without genetic manipulation.

This position arose, in part, from scientific consideration of the inherent uncertainties in performing such manipulations, which include cloning. Reviewing the animal studies in this area led Professor Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to state "I believe there probably isn't a normal clone around." Our postion also emanated

from the fact that any person engineered in this fashion will be an experiment, subject to the kinds of disappointments associated with experiments failing to meet expectations. A grim aspect of this experimental approach to producing people would the devaluation of "unfavorable" outcomes if, as in cloning, the same procedure could be performed repeatedly until a desired outcome was reached. In addition, while the Council for Responsible Genetics is unequivocally committed to women's right not to proceed with a pregnancy if that is her choice, we, along with many feminists and others who affirm this right, are concerned that "reproductive choice" is increasingly taken to include the right to genetically improve the next generation. If this is allowed it may soon lead to baby design and reproductive boutiques. Eugenics, defining humans as genetically superior or inferior and implementing those definitions, has a horrific history that we dare not repeat.

In line with the Genetic Bill of Rights, and in light of new experimental results and proposals to generate and modify human embryos, the Council for Responsible Genetics issued a policy statement on human embryo research earlier this month. The statement is appended and I will summarize it here:

The Council for Responsible Genetics opposes the utilization of human eggs and embryos for experimental manipulations and as items of commerce.

We therefore call for a ban on the buying or selling of human eggs or embryos, and the manipulation of any and a ll human eggs or embryos by transfer of cells, nuclei, cytoplasm, mitochondria, chromosomes, or isolated DNA or RNA molecules of human or non- human origin.

These bans are to apply whether or not the embryos are to be implanted and gestated.

No human embryo is to be produced solely for purposes of research.

These bans are to apply irrespective of the sources of funding, whether public or private.

It is essential that the United States join the many other nations that have banned reproductive cloning. But note that we call for a ban not just on reproductive cloning but on so-called "therapeutic cloning" as well. That is, even if a cloned embryo is not intended for gestation we are opposed to its manufacture. We have become convinced that if the construction of modified or cloned embryos is permitted there will be little standing in the way of using them for reproductive purposes. At that point gestation of cloned embryos would easily become defined as a matter of individual choice.

The bans that we call for would in no way curtail the option to employ in vitro fertilization for reproductive purposes. Moreover, while we do not explicitly reject the production of embryo stem cells from excess embryos produced by in vitro fertilization, my own view is that other scientific avenues, specifically adult stem cell research, have greater promise. A group of my colleagues at New York Medical College recently published on the repair of damaged mouse hearts with adult mouse stem cells. I know of no comparable successes with embryo stems cells in the mouse, even though such cells have been available and researched for more than a decade. Any objective view of the relevant animal research would conclude that adult stem cells are the better bet.

As recently as a year or two ago advocates of human cloning were careful to state that an embryo produced by cloning had no less dignity as a potential human than an embryo produced by fertilization. Now that some technical advantage is seen in making donor-matched stem cells from cloned embryos, distinctions are being made by interested parties between producing embryos for research by fertilization (still not acceptable) and doing so by cloning (now acceptable). If we let purely technical and utilitarian considerations determine what is acceptable in human reproduction and production, in a few brief years human error will assuredly lead to the production of humans with avoidable errors.

As a scientist, I am personally concerned that the products of our research not be used for dangerous and divisive purposes, which would bring disrepute to science and undermine our ability to do beneficial work. As these new technologies proliferate the question continually arises as to "where to draw the line." Because embryo cloning will, with virtual certainty, lead to the production of "experimental" human beings, both as a scientist and a citizen I urge you to draw the line here.



LOAD-DATE: June 21, 2001