SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. B01

LENGTH: 1729 words

HEADLINE: Cloning Creates Odd Bedfellows

BYLINE: Rick Weiss

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What would Rachel Carson say about human embryo cloning? It's an incongruous question, perhaps. After all, the current debate over cloning and embryo research was inconceivable in 1962 when Carson wrote "Silent Spring," launching the modern environmental movement.

Yet environmental groups -- along with a growing number of other liberal-leaning interest groups -- are increasingly voicing concerns about the bioethical issue of embryo cloning. In doing so, they are finding themselves shoulder to shoulder with the religious and political conservatives who have traditionally led the campaign against human embryo research.

Indeed, the more the human cloning issue evolves on Capitol Hill, the more the standard political banners so proudly waved in these parts have begun to tatter. Women's health groups, usually unified to the left of center, have split over the issue. Libertarians and others usually affiliated with the right -- including a former Reagan adviser, George A. Keyworth II -- have decried current efforts to ban cloning research. Those of us who work inside the Beltway are accustomed to political pragmatism. But as someone who has covered science here for almost 15 years, I can't think of a time or an issue that has so disrupted the usual political dividing lines. The emerging alliance between environmentalists and opponents of the research is the latest surprise. Some observers have sought to explain this convergence by labeling the enviros as back-to-nature Luddites, allergic to all kinds of modern technology. And to be sure, there's an element of pre-genome era romanticism feeding their reaction to embryo cloning -- that, and some anti-corporate cynicism toward biotech companies that keep promising, in the words of activist Andrew Kimbrell, the next "miracle cure du jour" even as they focus more on IPO accruals than FDA approvals.

But a close look at what's behind this political amalgam -- and how it may come apart in the months ahead -- offers not only a case study in strategic political symbiosis but also a glimpse of how the polarizing problem of embryo cloning might eventually be resolved.

By way of background, the debate over human cloning now facing the Senate has two components. One has to do with making cloned babies. The other has to do with making -- and destroying -- cloned human embryos for research purposes. Baby cloning is a topic without much of a constituency, and if that were the only issue, Congress would almost certainly pass a ban this session.

The problem is that both "reproductive cloning" and "research cloning" begin with a cloned embryo. And many scientists and patient advocates are opposed to a full federal ban on creating them, because cloned embryos appear to be an ideal source of stem cells, which may eventually help cure a number of degenerative diseases. These advocates generally support the two pending Senate bills -- one authored by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the other by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) -- that would allow the creation and destruction of human embryo clones for research while outlawing any transfer of cloned embryos to a woman's womb.

Opponents of the research support a more sweeping ban proposed by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) -- some because they believe that embryos represent human lives that ought not be the subject of experimentation and some because they fear it will be difficult to prevent the creation of a cloned baby once cloned embryos are being produced.

Until recently, the only vocal opposition to the research came from groups with a long history of concern for human embryos. National Right to Life Committee legislative director Douglas Johnson has talked about "the biotech industry's plans to set up human embryo farms." And Richard Doerflinger, of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently told President Bush's bioethics council that any ban that allowed embryos to be made but precluded their transfer to a uterus would be, in effect, a ban on their "later survival," -- a government order to kill those embryos.

But those embryo-focused forces failed to convince the Senate to ban cloning the last time legislators tackled the question, in 1998. And given the enormous power of the medical research, pharmaceutical and patient advocacy lobbies, they would have had a tough time again this year.

But this time they are not alone. Enter Rachel Carson's cavalry.

Leading the charge is Friends of the Earth (FOE), whose president, Brent Blackwelder, recently testified before Congress in support of a moratorium on the cloning of human embryos. The leaders (though not necessarily the memberships) of several other environmental groups are also speaking up -- including Michele Perrault, international vice president of the Sierra Club; Rainforest Action Network president Randy Hayes; Earth Island Institute executive director John A. Knox; and Greenpeace U.S.A. executive director John Passacantando. And a new Oakland, Calif.-based group called the Center for Genetics and Society has attracted a wide array of influential liberals to lobby for at least a temporary halt to human embryo cloning.

In doing so, they've had to swallow hard. "The first to be vocal on this issue were the religious conservatives," said Richard Hayes, the center's executive director. "And when the liberal and moderate opinion-makers saw that, the red flag went up: We said, 'If they're for it then we must be against it!.' But that has impeded the sort of reasoned policy analysis that a technology of this consequentiality demands."

Notable for its absence on the enviros' list of concerns, though, is any mention of the welfare of embryos. That's because for environmentalists and many other liberals the major concern is not research on cloned embryos but what may come next: the genetic modfication and enhancement of humans. Environmentalists have for decades been battling so-called experts who made what turned out to be hubristic promises that their projects would not harm the Earth. "Experts may know their subject well," Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, said, "but they often can't see what is just beyond the headlights." So environmentalists (as well as some conservatives) are trying to put off what they see as a "post-human future," in which people are victims of genetic "pollution" and a unprecedented gap grows between the gene-rich and gene-poor.

Truth be told, human embryo cloning would not necessarily facilitate such a future; cloning and gene enhancement are very different technologies and the latter could be banned without halting the former. But some activists have decided that today's cloning debate offers a strategic opportunity to change the course of science -- one that might not be available later. So they've made their peace with conservative bedfellows, but with a crucial flannel sheet between them: While conservatives clamor for a ban on all embryo cloning work, progressives talk of a moratorium -- a precautionary halt, at least until some system of public review and legislative oversight is in place.

For environmentalists, regulation has long been a favored solution, so it's hardly surprising that they should call for it now. "We've seen it time and time again -- with pesticides like DDT, with the nuclear industry, with habitat protection -- when there's a lack of enforceable environmental regulation things spiral out of control," said FOE spokesman Mark Helm.

In fact, considering how contentious the cloning issue has been, it's surprising that neither of the pending Senate bills that allow embryo cloning demands any significant oversight. Might regulation hold the key to a workable compromise -- one that stays within the comfort zone of the average American?

Absolutists, of course, will never agree. Cowboy scientists who want to pursue their research without anyone looking over their white-coated shoulders will always chafe at efforts to slow them down. Similarly, those who believe embryos have a God-given right to survive will never settle for a system that allows such entities to be grown in dishes in the pursuit of cures. But many others might be more comfortable if research were allowed to go forward only with strict scientific and ethical restrictions that try to reflect the panoply of fears, discomforts, hopes and dreams of this nation's diverse populace.

An amendment to existing bills might just do the job, said R. Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin and one of many experts scrambling to find a solution to the cloning standoff.

One approach, Charo said, might be to legislate a requirement that scientists gain a nod of approval not only from the FDA, whose regulatory authority over embryo research is currently limited to issues of safety and efficacy, not ethics -- but also from a committee similar to those that today must approve all research involving animals, or the institutional review boards that oversee research on people. Such a committee, Charo said, could ensure that embryos are tracked from creation to destruction and are never made available for uterine transfer; human eggs used for cloning are obtained without undue risk or enticement to donor women; and the research does not violate federal ethics rules relating to funding or the mixing of human and animal cells.

The devil, of course, would be in the details for any compromise that offers a "moratorium" in place of a "ban." Specifically, what would it take to trigger an end to the moratorium? In the 1970s a new rule said federal funding of human embryo research could begin as soon as the research passed muster with a special ethics board that was to be created. The government never formed that board, effectively maintaining a ban on such research.

Regulatory schemes don't happen overnight. And old political divisions often reassert themselves when it comes time for the legislative ink to flow. Who among those on the left supportive of medical research will back a ban for the months or years it might take to develop regulations? Alternatively, who among those on the right opposed to unfettered embryo research will allow such experiments to proceed until such regulations are in place?</body>Rick Weiss writes about science for The Washington Post.

LOAD-DATE: February 10, 2002