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[Page: S5659] GPO's PDF---
Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I understand we are going to be voting on a very important bill at about 3:45, in just 20, 25 minutes. I support the bill on terrorism insurance creating a mechanism for us to create a system in this country for a new kind of insurance, unfortunately, one for which there has become an apparent need since September 11, and without which there would be a great hardship for our banking and financial industries and also for our real estate developers. Frankly, all businesses--many in Louisiana--are affected across our Nation.
So I am going to be supportive of this terrorism insurance bill, and have been supportive of it in the process of trying to bring it to the floor for a final vote.
But I want to take a few minutes, before we actually vote on that bill, to speak on an issue that is not directly before the Senate but is something in which many of us are involved, and for which we are trying to come up with some solutions. This is the very important issue involving the subject of cloning . It involves issues related to potential research in cloning .
We believe this is a subject the Senate and Congress is going to have to address, and we are attempting to address it. There are various differences of opinion about how to do that. So I come to the floor to speak for a minute while we have some time.
First of all, as you know, Madam President, and as many of my colleagues know, I am working with Senator Brownback and Senator Frist and others to try to fashion a position on this bill that would basically create a moratorium of some type--either long term, short term, or intermediate term--because we believe this is an issue with serious ethical considerations and one that we, as a Congress, and as leaders, should have to give very careful consideration to before we would go forward.
That has been the essence of our approach, just trying to slow things down so that perhaps we could get enough information to say that we should not, at any time, under any circumstance, go forward with human cloning . But the basis of our approach has been a moratorium to give us more time to get some of this important information out to the public.
This is an issue of great concern to the public. Generally, I think people want to be supportive of ethical kinds of research, particularly for the development of cures for diseases. Juvenile diabetes comes to mind; also cures for cancer and spinal cord injuries.
We want to be very supportive of ethical approaches to research to provide cures for people who are suffering: children, adults, older people. I think this Senate has gone on record, in a truly bipartisan fashion, supporting the increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health, and it has been a remarkable increase in funding. I, for one, have been very strongly supportive of that funding and want it to continue.
But I want to spend a moment talking about some of the problems--ethical and otherwise--associated with the process of human cloning and to suggest that the Feinstein-Kennedy approach, which basically would be asking the Senate, if you will--and why I am not supporting that approach--and Congress to consider, for the first time, sanctioning or legalizing human cloning .
I do not think there is enough information for us to make that decision. Let me give you a couple of reasons.
First of all, some of the proponents of human cloning --people who say we should go forward with human cloning --try to make a distinction between human cloning and therapeutic cloning or reproductive cloning or nuclear transfer.
One of the points I want to make is that human cloning is human cloning
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As shown on this chart, it is the one process that we are talking about. There are not two or three or four processes; there is one process. That process involves an unfertilized egg and a cell from an adult stem cell. The nucleus is removed and put into this unfertilized egg, and it becomes basically an embryo.
The Feinstein-Kennedy-Specter approach says that we should basically authorize this for the first time, say it is legal, authorize it, and engage in the creation of a human embryo--not a plant, not an animal, but a human embryo; and then just say at a certain point--whether it is 12 days or 14 days or 16 days--that embryo would then be destroyed, basically before it is implanted. That is the Feinstein-Kennedy-Specter
approach.
Senator Brownback and I--because of many similar concerns and some different concerns--and Senator Frist believe the line should be drawn at this point until we can make a better determination about the risks and benefits associated with human cloning ; that is, to stop the process before it begins.
One of the reasons we believe this--although the law might try to draw a line here after the embryo has been created--is because it is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce this line because somewhere, some time, that line is going to be pierced and we will end up having a cloned embryo implanted. Then the question is, What do you do then?
The possibilities of passing any kind of so-called compromise that would legalize and authorize human cloning for the first time in our Nation's history could get us on to a very slippery slope. That is why some of us are urging to slow it down, have more study, and have a short-term moratorium, which even President Clinton, in his term as President, said--of course, when Dolly, the sheep, was created--that is exactly what we should do until we get more information about the benefits and risks associated with cloning .
So it is not only President Bush who is urging us to slow down, but both Democrat and Republican administrations. And you can understand why. It puts us on a very slippery slope if we--and I hope we do not; and I am going to fight to make sure we do not--start with the premise that we can legalize human cloning , authorize it, potentially even fund it with Government funding; that we at least legalize it so that millions of private dollars flow into the research on human cloning , harvesting, creating these millions of embryos in labs all around the country and supporting their development in labs all around the world--harvesting them and destroying them, harvesting them and destroying them, harvesting them and destroying them.
Then, at some point, because these are not Government-run labs, these are private sector labs, these are people who will be working--to give everybody the benefit of the doubt, let's say most people are working on some potential cures for diseases, although they may be far in the distance, but it is not inconceivable, and it is common sense to believe that at some point somebody--a scientist, a patient, a woman, a couple--is going to push the envelope, implant what is a legal clone, and then look at us or go call a press conference and say: Now what? It is a clone that has been created because we have legalized it. It is a clone. We will have legalized it, if we pass a bill that does legalize it. And then the question is, What are you going to do about it?
Once a clone is implanted, what do we do if it is delivered or born healthy? That is one issue. What if it is born grossly mutilated, which is probably, based on the Dolly, the sheep, experiment and research, going to happen because 275 embryo trials were used to create Dolly, the sheep. All of them ended in death or destruction to the creature, the clone being created, and then finally a clone was successfully delivered.
For us to think that this is the time--there has been only one hearing in a Senate committee on this subject, at least in recent years; perhaps there were some many years ago, but I don't think so--to move forward with a bill that would authorize human cloning is at best premature and, frankly, in my opinion, at this particular point, wholly unproven technology with tremendous ethical questions and great difficulty in trying to police what would basically be an authorized legal process of creating for the first time in America human clones.
That is as simple as I can state it. There is not a difference between therapeutic cloning or nuclear transfer. There are many names for it, but it is one process. It is the same process. The issue is, should we start that process and, if so, where should we stop it. Another question is, Could you really stop it once it is started?
The other reason I am suggesting a pause, a moratorium of some nature, maybe 2 years, 3 years, 4 years, enough time for us to develop a blue ribbon panel of scientists, not with preordained notions but truly a group of scientists who can help us as a nation figure out what would be, if any, benefits of human cloning , we have to realize that right now in the body of the law we are not even engaging in the full range of stem cell research that holds tremendous potential for the discovery of cures for many of these diseases.
We have very limited research on stem cells going on in this country, either adult or embryonic stem cells. Why? Because we have not even come to a consensus on that. Human cloning takes us many steps past that issue. We can work on nonclones. We can work on noncloned embryos and still get a tremendous amount of benefit without the terrible ethical consideration this raises.
The third issue is, if you think about it, even in a macro sense, even those of us who are not trained as doctors or scientists could understand that one issue that might compel a person, a family, a grieving parent over a fatally ill child or a spouse over another fatally ill spouse would be if the research or the benefits could not be derived from regular embryos or from stem cells on nonclones, and the only way to cure this person's particular disease would be to get something harvested from a clone. That is the rejection issue.
If everything else has been exhausted, none of the other methods or procedures is working in other areas, then perhaps we would have to get tissue or research or some piece of a cell from a cloned embryo. We are so far from making that determination. I have not read one scientific study, one legitimate group of scientists anywhere, not any prize winners, not any research has been done or even theorized that that would be the only way, the rejection issue, to overcome the objections to cloning .
Those of us who are urging a moratorium are not against research. We are strongly--many of us--supportive of stem cell research. But to rush headlong into a process that will for the first time legalize human cloning because there might
be a slight benefit, which is totally unproven, to get over a rejection issue by using a human clone is a real stretch, and it is very premature.
What I am hoping is that we can continue this debate for Members to come to the floor and speak about some of these issues at the appropriate time. We don't want to hold up other important bills. But this is a very important bill for our Nation. It will set a pace, a direction for our research.
I am hoping in the next several days and weeks we can come up with a compromise on this issue that will not authorize the creation of clones but that will allow us some more time to study the benefits of human cloning , if there are any, if it can be proven, and if those benefits outweigh the grave risk, the tremendous risk associated with legalizing human cloning , and then trying to stop the implantation of the clones. I think it puts our society at a great risk, at a great disadvantage, to try to regulate something we have never tried to regulate before.
The Feinstein-Kennedy approach is not a ban on human cloning ; it is an exception to the ban on human cloning . It would authorize and legalize human cloning for the first time in our Nation's history. We have to be very careful before we open what could be a Pandora's box or at least get us on a slippery slope towards a system where we
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If this study comes out and the research suggests the only way to find cures for this disease for this particular individual might be to explore the benefits or to explore the opportunities in a clone, maybe some ethical considerations would be outweighed if a life could be saved or if this is the only way to save a life. But we are not anywhere near that.
I urge my colleagues to take a very close look at what Senator Brownback and Senator Frist and I will suggest as a compromise to get us through these next years, using our good values and our common sense and our ethics, always promoting good research and good science, but not getting ourselves in a direction where we cannot pull back and causing our population to have to deal with the birth of a first human clone.
To then have to ask ourselves, why didn't we do something more to stop this and what do we do now that we have the first clone alive and in the world--we have to think about it.
I hope we can come to terms with this issue. That is why I wanted to spend some time speaking about it.
It is a very exciting time in science. We are exploring and inventing and discovering things people even 25 or 30 or 40 years ago thought could never possibly be. There are some wonderful things about science and discovery, but there are limits that sometimes need to be placed. We have now for the first time in human history come to terms with the fact that we can create not a plant clone, not an animal clone, but the potential to create a human clone.
The question before the Congress is, Should we start that process? I am saying as simply as I can, before we start, we had better be sure of what we are going to do, when basically the line we draw is breached, as surely as it will be one day, and make sure we can draw a line and set a framework in place that minimizes the chances of a human clone being born in our lifetime or forever.
I think it is definitely worth debating and worth considering. I yield back the remainder of my time. I see my colleague from the great State of Connecticut is with us.
Before I yield the floor, I ask unanimous consent to have two articles by Charles Krauthammer printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
Research Cloning ? No.
Proponents of research cloning would love to turn the cloning debate into a Scopes monkey trial, a struggle between religion and science. It is not.
Many do oppose research cloning because of deeply held beliefs that destroying a human embryo at any stage violates the sanctity of human life. I respect that view, but I do not share it. I have no theology. I do not believe that personhood begins at conception. I support stem cell research. But I oppose research cloning .
It does no good to change the nomenclature. The Harry and Louise ad asks, ``Is it cloning ?'' and answers, ``No, it uses an unfertilized egg and a skin cell.''
But fusing (the nucleus of) a ``somatic'' cell (such as skin) with an enucleated egg cell is precisely how you clone. That is how Dolly the sheep was created (with the cell taken not from the skin but from the udder). And that is how pig, goat, cow, mouse, cat and rabbit clones are created.
The scientists pushing this research go Harry and Louise one better. They want to substitute the beautifully sterile, high-tech sounding term SCNT--``somatic cell nuclear transfer''--for cloning . Indeed, the nucleus of a somatic cell is transferred into an egg cell to produce a clone. But to say that is not cloning is like saying: ``No, that is not sex. It is just penile vaginal intromission.'' Describing the technique does not change the nature of the enterprise.
Cloning it is. And it is research cloning rather than reproductive cloning because the intention is not to produce a cloned child but to grow the embryo long enough to dismember it for its useful scientific parts.
And that is where the secularists have their objection. What makes research cloning different from stem cell research--what pushes us over a moral frontier--is that for the first time it sanctions the creation of a human embryo for the sole purpose of using it for its parts. Indeed, it will sanction the creation of an entire industry of embryo manufacture whose explicit purpose is not creation of children but dismemberment for research.
It is the ultimate commodification of the human embryo. And it is a bridge too far. Reducing the human embryo to nothing more than a manufactured thing sets a fearsome desensitizing precedent that jeopardizes all the other ethical barriers we have constructed around embryonic research.
This is not just my view. This was the view just months ago of those who, like me, supported federally funded stem cell research.
The clinching argument then was this: Look, we are simply trying to bring some good from embryos that would otherwise be discarded in IVF clinics. This is no slippery slope. We are going to put all kinds of safeguards around stem cell research. We are not about to start creating human embryos for such research. No way.
Thus when Senators Tom Harkin and Arlen Specter were pushing legislation promoting stem cell research in 2000, they stipulated that ``the stem cells used by scientists can only be derived from spare embryos that would otherwise be discarded by in vitro fertilization clinics.'' Lest there be any ambiguity, they added: ``Under our legislation, strict federal guidelines would ensure [that] no human embryos will be created for research purposes.''
Yet two years later, Harkin and Specter are two of the most enthusiastic Senate proponents of creating cloned human embryos for research purposes.
In testimony less than 10 months ago, Senator Orrin Hatch found ``extremely troubling'' the just-reported work of the Jones Institute, ``which is creating embryos in order to conduct stem cell research.''
The stem cell legislation Hatch was then supporting--with its ``federal funding with strict research guidelines,'' he assured us--was needed precisely to prevent such ``extremely troubling'' procedures.
That was then. Hatch has just come out for research cloning whose entire purpose is ``creating embryos in order to conduct stem cell research.''
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