04-14-2001

CONGRESS: Now a Debate, in Triplicate, Over Cloning

Despite polls showing overwhelming public opposition to the cloning of
human beings, several scientists have made it clear that they are on a
quick path toward the birth of the world's first human clone. That has
given rise to a fresh push in Congress for laws to ban just such an
eventuality.


But the debate has changed significantly from the last major cloning
scare-in 1997, when Dolly the sheep clone had her coming-out party. After
nearly four years of research and the accumulation of greater knowledge
and awareness, the debate over human cloning has branched out into three
debates on Capitol Hill. In essence, the debate over whether to clone
humans has itself been cloned.


The three debates relate to the differing visions for cloning, each of
which has its own proponents and adversaries furiously lobbying Congress
for support of their respective positions-often amid decision-makers'
ignorance of cloning science, recent medical advances, and the business
plans of the companies doing the research.


Cloning for the purposes of human reproduction-implanting a cloned human
embryo in a woman-inspires opposition from many, perhaps most, lawmakers.
Greater disagreement comes over whether to allow what researchers call
"therapeutic cloning" (to opponents, it's destructive
cloning)-in which scientists clone a human embryo not to breed a baby, but
to manufacture and extract certain human cells that can then be used in
research and in life-saving and elective surgeries. This extraction
process, of course, destroys the embryo. A third view holds that cloning
should never be allowed for commercial purposes.


The coming debate is an important, and unusual, one. As in the perennial
abortion-rights debates, the arguments go directly to the question of when
human life begins, and what sort of balance should be struck, if any,
between the life and rights of a human embryo and the lives, rights, and
health of those humans already walking the planet. And the debate largely
pits Republican against Republican instead of Democrat against the Grand
Old Party. Perhaps most intriguing is that both sides of the abortion
question may realign themselves into two new factions-for and against
commercial cloning.


To get the legislative battle rolling, and to reinforce the public's
existing queasiness over cloning, Reps. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin,
R-La., and Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., invited Brigitte Boisselier to testify at
a March 28 hearing of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.
Boisselier, a scientist for the obscure Raelian religion, a Canadian cult
that worships science, said that her group is already attempting to clone
a human at an undisclosed site in the United States.


Tauzin and Greenwood used Boisselier's testimony to help publicize their
proposed bill that would ban the implantation of a cloned embyro within a
woman for subsequent birth. Tauzin chairs the Energy and Commerce
Committee, and Greenwood chairs the panel's Oversight and Investigations
Subcommittee, so the two have the clout to promote their bill. They have,
however, yet to introduce the bill.


Somewhat surprisingly, lobbyists for some patients' groups, scientists,
and medical companies may support the bill, in part for tactical reasons.
Its passage, they say, could disarm the anti-cloning forces and allow
research cloning to go forward. These groups fear a huge public backlash
will arise when people become more aware that human reproductive cloning
experiments are just that-experiments-and that many cloned human embryos
and fetuses may die before even one is successfully implanted in the womb.
In previous experiments on cloned animals, for example, very few clones
survived intact through gestation and birth.


The patients' groups, scientists, and companies very much want to preserve
research cloning, because it could supply a large source of versatile
human "stem cells" that scientists predict can be grown into
patches for treating the diseased organs of living patients-patients who
themselves may be the clone's biological parent. And proponents hope that
such experiments will result in not only miracle cures, but also lucrative
patents, Nobel Prizes, and business fortunes.


A loose faction of right-of-center and left-of-center advocates and
legislators, however, opposes both types of cloning-when done for
commercial benefit. The right-of-center activists and legislators also
tend to oppose abortion rights. The left-of-center groups, including the
United Methodist Church, endorse abortion rights. This loose faction urges
alternative therapies and more research on stem cells that are found in
adults. "We would still continue to do this research with animal
embryos and learn most everything we need to learn, but without cloning
human embryos," said Jaydee Hanson, assistant general secretary of
the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society.


But Greenwood says the ideal bill would be a narrow "rifle shot"
that would just bar birth cloning without damaging research efforts. The
politics, however, would be difficult. "We can write that bill, but
can we pass that without it being amended into something that would
interfere with research?" he asked. For example, any effort to curb
cloning research or related research into embryos' stem cells would kill
the bill, he said.


Biotechnology companies are, like Tauzin and Greenwood, eager to set aside
the most controversial element of human cloning-reproductive cloning. But
the two lawmakers' legislation is not the answer, says Carl B. Feldbaum,
president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents
biotechnology companies. Feldbaum fears that a birth-cloning bill would
swell into a broader bill that would also stymie cloning research.
"Our concern is that we don't want another legislative circus ...
that some other political group sees this [as an] opportunity to turn this
proposal into a Christmas tree for other proposals on stem-cell research,
abortion, whatever," Feldbaum said.


Feldbaum points to several cases where state legislatures nearly enacted
laws that went much further than the bill's original sponsors had
intended. Indeed, BIO has had to carefully monitor the progress of state
legislation since Dolly's debut. At that time, a flash flood of federal
and state bills on cloning rolled through statehouses, and BIO found
itself frequently deploying "SWAT" teams to warn state
policy-makers about the possible adverse impact of these proposals on
important research. For example, a bill introduced in the Florida
Legislature just a week after the Dolly announcement would have banned the
cloning of human DNA altogether-something regularly done in all kinds of
pharmaceutical and medical research. The bill's author "would have
subjected the [cloning of human DNA] to criminal penalties. He would lock
up half of all medical researchers in Florida," Feldbaum said at the
time.


Following Dolly's hello, opposition from BIO helped kill a broad
anti-cloning bill in the U.S. Senate. BIO received notable support then
from several anti-abortion Republicans who were worried about choking off
research.


Instead of federal anti-cloning laws, BIO wants the new Administration to
continue President Clinton's directive to the Food and Drug Administration
not to approve the medical procedure of birthing a cloned baby. Feldbaum
sent a letter to President Bush in February, urging him to continue
Clinton's policy. But aside from the FDA rule, there are no laws
restricting birth cloning or private-sector research into cloning
technology. Federal agencies do not allocate any funds specifically for
cloning programs, but they do spend money on basic research that could
help researchers studying cloning.


Feldbaum stressed the importance of protecting the kinds of research in
which BIO companies are heavily invested. "We support cloning of
specific human cells, genes, and other tissues that do not and cannot lead
to a cloned human being," he wrote. "These techniques are
integral to the production of breakthrough medicines, diagnostics, and
vaccines to treat heart attacks, various cancers, Alzheimer's, diabetes,
hepatitis, and other diseases."


Some scientific associations, too, are nervous that the birth-cloning
debate could lead to broad bioethics restrictions. These associations,
including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the
American Society for Cell Biology, have support from other groups,
including the in vitro fertilization industry, whose business is making
human embryos for childless couples. Some of the excess embryos made by in
vitro clinics are donated for genetic and cloning research.


While Tauzin and Greenwood are working on their bill that would ban birth
cloning, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., is seeking an unconditional ban on
human cloning. Brownback, who is a member of the Senate Commerce panel's
Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee, said in an interview that he
will introduce his bill sometime around May 2, and will hold hearings soon
after.


Brownback is unreservedly critical of therapeutic cloning, and calls it
the equivalent of destroying human life. "Therapeutic cloning is the
taking of a young human, an embryo, and taking its DNA material, the
nucleus out of it, inserting another person's genetic code within that
shell of an egg, and starting that life, and then, after it's been
reproducing for a number of days, destroying that life for the embryonic
stem cells, to get at the tissue or the liver. It's destroying two
humans."


Moreover, he argues, therapeutic cloning simply isn't necessary.
Scientists are discovering that adults' stem cells may be more useful than
embryos' stem cells in repairing diseased organs, he said. "It's
immoral to kill a young human, and this is completely unnecessary."
Brownback and his allies, however, failed in 1998 to win Senate approval
for a broad anti-cloning bill.


House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and other conservative
Republicans have also expressed concern over the idea of human cloning.
After Clinton announced his moratorium on human cloning in 1998, Armey
said: "Cloning is wrong wherever you do it. It should be banned. The
ban should be permanent." But so far, the GOP's congressional
leadership has taken no official position on these issues.


Any broad ban on cloning would likely draw support from many outside
groups, certainly on the right, and a few on the left. These groups
include anti-abortion activists, such as the National Right to Life
Committee, as well as some abortion-rights supporters, such as Hanson's
Methodist organization, and the Cambridge, Mass.-based Center for
Responsible Genetics. But the national abortion-rights groups would likely
oppose a full ban on cloning because of the potential benefits of
research. "In no way do we support the birth of human clones,"
said Elizabeth Cavendish, legal director of the National Abortion and
Reproductive Rights Action League. "But we will resist anti-choice
efforts to hold up research."


Greenwood and Tauzin hope to enlist a broad coalition from the Right and
Left to endorse their ban on birth cloning. Opponents of cloning research,
Greenwood said, should accept the birth-cloning ban now and fight for
their other issues later, if only to avoid deadlock over abortion
politics. "I don't think the pro-choice side will oppose a bill that
is straightforward: No cloning of a human being. [But] all of the
pro-choice community would oppose it" if research were curbed, said
Greenwood. Tauzin's spokesman, Ken Johnson, concurred: "We are not
going to get sidetracked by some of these peripheral debates, because if
we do, we will lose perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to preserve
the nature of the human race as we know it."


Nevertheless, the abortion issue looms large over the entire cloning
debate. The anti-abortion advocates, trying to be consistent, see any
human embryo, just as they do a fetus, as human life, with rights of its
own. The biotech industry, and other groups on the left, see these
microscopic clusters of cloned human cells mainly as an invaluable
resource for potentially life-saving medical treatments.


According to Hanson, the biotech industry is cynically twisting the
cloning debate into an abortion issue "to imply to the Democratic
parts of their constituents that a vote on this is the same as a vote on a
woman's right to choose." But, he said, "there is a big
difference between the kind of wrenching decision that a woman and her
family might have to make," on carrying to term a fetus made in the
act of love, and the research calculations performed by companies in a
laboratory. Also, "it is also different in terms of scale [because
scientists need] many, many embryos in order to do the research they are
talking about," he said.


It will be difficult for President Bush to avoid this contentious debate
on cloning. Indeed, the Bush Administration already jumped into the fray
when it ordered a review of a last-minute Clinton regulation that could
ease federal restrictions on cloning research. Under current
regulations-enforced by annual congressional riders to appropriations
bills-no federal research money can be used to destroy human embryos for
the purposes of obtaining stem cells. Clinton's regulation would allow
federal funding of stem-cell projects in which the material from human
embryos comes from a private lab or clinic. In other words, federal
researchers couldn't destroy human embryos, but private labs could. And
those private labs could then send the material to federal
researchers.


Bush's decision on this regulation will likely set the course for future
decisions in the cloning debate. White House officials have shown that
they recognize scientific distinctions between the various types of
cloning, said Feldbaum, but they have also shown "they are under some
considerable ideological pressure" to restrict cloning and research
using stem cells from human embryos. In response, Feldbaum said, he
explained that no stem cells have been found in adults that could
substitute for an embryo's stem cells for use in curing cardiac and
pancreatic diseases.


But BIO faces an uphill fight at the White House. "The President
believes that no research-no research-to create a human being should take
place in the United States," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said
recently. Although that sounds clear and unequivocal, it leaves a lot to
question. When asked to clarify Fleischer's remarks, White House spokesman
Scott McClellan said that Bush "is opposed to taxpayer funding for
fetal-tissue research from induced abortions. He is opposed to federal
funding on stem cells that destroy living human embryos." But Health
and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson-who oversees medical
research funds-told National Journal that he simply isn't sure of the
President's position, and that the regulatory review is not yet
complete.


Feldbaum and his industry allies will be examining the White House's
actions with a microscope once draft legislation or regulations are
unveiled. "If we can show that any paragraph, any provision, any
apostrophe or comma actually damages legal biomedical research for any
number of serious diseases," Feldbaum said, then the new regulations
are open to challenge.


Neil Munro and Marilyn Werber Serafini

National Journal