Copyright 2001 The San Diego Union-Tribune  
The San Diego Union-Tribune
August 2, 2001, Thursday
SECTION: BUSINESS;Pg. C-2

LENGTH: 416 words

HEADLINE: Local biotech leaders question bans on cloning

BYLINE: Thomas Kupper; STAFF WRITER | The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BODY:
The human cloning bill now moving through Congress is unlikely to slow down research under way in San Diego's biotech community, but industry leaders still oppose it as a potential impediment to useful science.

The House passed a bill Tuesday that would ban not only cloning of humans, a ban that much of the biotech industry supports, but also "therapeutic cloning" of embryos for use in research.

No scientists in San Diego have publicly disclosed plans to do either kind of cloning, though companies elsewhere seek to clone embryos whose cells could be used to repair the heart, liver, brain and other organs.

Some question whether it is necessary or desirable to abolish research with potential medical benefits.

BioCom, the group that represents San Diego's biotech industry, is among many industry groups that have lobbied Congress not to pursue a blanket ban of cloning of embryos.

"We all have great concerns at the prospect of cloning a human being," BioCom President Joe Panetta said in a letter to lawmakers earlier this week. "However (the bill) bans all use of cloning technology."

The controversy comes amid a debate over the use of stem cells, which are sometimes taken from aborted fetuses and which researchers believe can also be used to grow cells for organ repair.

The only San Diego company thus far to disclose plans to work with stem cells is MorphoGen, a 10-employee company with plans to use stem calls from adult tissue to repair damaged organs.

But MorphoGen said it has no plans to clone embryos or to grow tissue from embryonic cells. Rather, its research would involve working with a patient's own cells.

"(A cloning ban) doesn't affect us at all," said John Wong. "We're definitely opposed to any kind of cloning of human species."

The only U.S. company that has announced plans to clone embryos is Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Mass., which plans to create embryos without sperm, using technology that produced the famous cloned sheep Dolly.

Although Advanced Cell has yet to clone a human embryo, it's working hard to do so, and has already collected eggs from paid donors. The company said a U.S. ban on such work could force it to shift research overseas.

Cloning embryos is legal in England, for example, and the company said that if such work is successful, the United States could lose a potential scientific breakthrough.

Thomas Kupper's e-mail address is thom.kupper@uniontrib.com. His phone number is (619) 293-1037.



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