Congress May Vote Soon on Creation and Killing of Human Embryos

WASHINGTON (July 13, 2001) -- Congress may decide the fate of many thousands of embryonic human beings by roll call votes that are likely to occur over the weeks and months immediately ahead. The outcome of these congressional battles depends on immediate grassroots actions by pro-life citizens nationwide.

Banning Human Cloning

Human cloning is a proposed process in which genetic material from one person would be artificially transferred into a human or animal egg cell, thereby beginning the life of a new human individual who has only one parent and who is genetically identical to that parent.

NRLC believes each human life at every stage of biological development is deserving of respect and protection, regardless of the circumstances under which that human life was created. In contrast, biotechnology corporations wish to use cloning to mass- produce human embryos so that they can be used -- and killed -- in medical research.

As early as the period of July 30-August 3, the U.S. House of Representatives may vote on the Human Cloning Prohibition Act (H.R. 1644), sponsored by pro-life Reps. Dave Weldon (R-Fl.) and Bart Stupak (D-Mi.). This bill, which is supported by NRLC and many other organizations, would prohibit the use of cloning to create any human beings, including human embryos.

However, the Weldon-Stupak bill faces intense opposition from the powerful Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), which represents biotechnology corporations that wish to use cloning to mass-produce human embryos in order to harvest their stem cells for medical research, or to subject them to other lethal manipulations. The biotechnology firms refer to this as " therapeutic cloning," but pro-life groups call it "clone and kill."

The clone-and-kill approach is embodied in a bill (H.R. 2172) introduced by pro-abortion Congressman Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) as a hostile alternative to the Weldon-Stupak bill. Supporters of the Greenwood bill misleadingly claim that it would "ban the cloning of human beings," but they mean to exclude human embryos from the class of "human beings."

In reality, the Greenwood bill would permit the use of cloning to specially create human embryos for lethal research, and would discourage only the placement of any such embryo in a woman's womb (which some call "reproductive cloning"). Thus, the Greenwood bill would amount to a federal legal mandate that any human embryo created by cloning must ultimately be killed. NRLC is strongly opposed to Greenwood's "clone and kill" legislation.

In the Senate, pro-life Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.) has introduced a bill (S. 790) identical to the Weldon-Stupak bill.

Researchers have cloned sheep, monkeys, and some other mammals, but so far there is no confirmed report of any researcher successfully using cloning to create human embryos. However, the urgent need for enactment of the Weldon-Stupak-Brownback legislation was demonstrated by a report in the July 12 Washington Post that a major biotechnology firm, Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, has acknowledged that it has an active project underway to try to create cloned human embryos for destructive research.

The Post article also revealed that the corporation has put together a team of consultants that is considering inventing a new term to describe the embryos that they intend to create, in an attempt to soften what they anticipate will be adverse public reaction to their project. Some of the consultants believe "it would be useful to call the cells something less inflammatory than an embryo," the article explained. (See story, page 6.)

Embryo-Destructive Stem Cell Research

In addition to the human cloning issue, a congressional battle is brewing over the question of whether the federal government should provide funds for stem-cell research in which human embryos are killed.

In 2000, the Clinton Administration authorized the federal National Institutes of Health (NIH) to begin accepting applications from researchers who want federal money to do research on stem cells that are obtained by killing human embryos, who are usually five or six days old. However, the Bush Administration has blocked any such grants from actually being approved while it reviews the Clinton policy.

As the news media have covered extensively in recent weeks, President Bush is personally engaged in an intensive study of the issue. NRLC and other pro-life organizations are urging the President to nullify the Clinton guidelines and prevent any federal funding for research that uses stems cells obtained by killing an embryonic human being.

The majority leader of the Senate, pro-abortion Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD), says that if President Bush does attempt to permanently block funding of embryo-destructive stem cell research, Daschle will quickly challenge the President by moving legislation to the Senate floor to mandate such funding.

Presumably, that legislation would be some version of the Specter-Harkin bill (S. 723), which would authorize federal funding of all stages of embryo-destructive research, including the actual killing of human embryos.

Thus, it is critical that both senators and U.S. House members hear from constituents who oppose federal funding of embryo- destructive research. In a national poll conducted in early June by International Communications Research, the public opposed federal funding of stem cell research in which "live embryos would be destroyed in their first week of development," by a margin of 70% to 24%.

Fortunately, stem cells for medical research may be obtained without killing human embryos. Researchers have obtained stem cells from adult fat, blood, and bone marrow, and also from umbilical cords and placentas. In the early June poll, the public supported the funding of these ethical alternatives to embryo-killing research, 67% to 18%.

On June 7, Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced the Responsible Stem Cell Research Act (H.R. 2096), to authorize expanded federal funding of research using stem cells from these sources.

Actions Requested

* Please write to your U.S. House member. Urge him or her to support the Weldon-Stupak Human Cloning Prohibition Act (H.R. 1644). Urge the lawmaker to oppose the "clone and kill" alternative bill (H.R. 2172) proposed by Congressman Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.), which would permit the use of cloning to mass- produce human embryos for lethal medical research (which some call "therapeutic cloning").

Also, ask the lawmaker to oppose federal funding of any stem cell research in which human embryos are harmed. Encourage the representative to support the Responsible Stem Cell Research Act (H.R. 2096), sponsored by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), which would expand federal funding of research on stem cells obtained from adults and from umbilical cords--without harming human embryos.

The address for all members of the House of Representatives is:

The Honorable _______________

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

* Write to your two U.S. senators. Urge them to support Senator Brownback's S. 790, to ban all human cloning, and to oppose any substitute measure that would allow "therapeutic cloning," because this term really means that human embryos would be created in large numbers simply to be killed in research ("clone and kill").

Also urge the lawmakers to oppose Senator Specter's S. 723, which would authorize federal funding of research in which human embryos would be killed in order to obtain their stem cells.

The address for all U.S. Senators is:

Senator ____________

U.S. Senate

Washington, D.C. 20510

A NOTE ON E-MAIL: If you use e-mail to write to a lawmaker, be sure to include your regular mailing address in the e-mail. Otherwise, your representative has no way of knowing whether you are actually his or her constituent. For House members' e-mail addresses, see www.house.gov. For senators' e-mail addresses, see www.senate.gov. For general information on congressional legislation (bill texts, cosponsors, roll calls, etc.) see http://thomas.loc.gov.

* Send a letter of 250-300 words to the letters column of your local newspaper(s), encouraging citizens to contact their senators to urge support for banning all human cloning, in order to prevent the use of cloning to mass-produce human embryos for research that will kill them. According to a July 12 report in the Washington Post, a Massachusetts firm, Advanced Cell Technology, has already

admitted that it is attempting to clone human embryos for this purpose.

* You can greatly assist NRLC's lobbying efforts by sending a copy of any response from a lawmaker, and any local press report or editorial dealing with these issues, to:

National Right to Life Committee

Federal Legislative Office

419-Seventh Street,

Northwest, Suite 500,

Washington, D.C. 20004

Phone: (202) 626-8820 Fax: (202) 347-3668

E-Mail: Legfederal@aol.com

Resources

For additional information on these issues, see the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org, under "Federal Legislation: Killing Human Embryos." For extensive additional information on research that kills human embryos, and on ethical alternatives such as adult stem cell research, see the website of Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics, at www.stemcellresearch.org.