January 8, 2003

Momentum Builds in Congress for a Cloning Ban

Washington, DC—Amid claims that a UFO cult has produced the world’s first cloned human being, GOP leaders met today to set their legislative priorities for the beginning of the 108th session of Congress. Some policy analysts predict that the new Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) will announce a full ban on human cloning, including a ban on cloning for biomedical research, as one of the top ten bills on his domestic agenda. An increasing number of progressive organizations, from bioethics advocates such as the Council for Responsible Genetics to women’s groups such as the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective and the National Women’s Health Network, have come out in support of policies that would ban full term cloning and, at the very least, place a temporary moratorium on research cloning.

Last year, by a vote of 265 to 162, the House of Representative passed a bill that would criminalize both reproductive cloning and cloning for research purposes. Since then, the legislation has been stalled in the Senate, with less than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. A number of senior Republicans, including Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA), see research cloning as a promising path for developing future treatments for disease.

Signs that Congress could break the stalemate began to emerge after Republicans swept the November mid-term elections. At a press conference on November 6th, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that human cloning would be a “top priority” in the President’s upcoming policy agenda. Analysts expect President Bush to repeat his support for a ban on human cloning in the State of the Union address later this month.

Encouraged by the transfer of control from Democrats to Republicans in the Senate, Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) announced two days after Christmas that he would re-introduce the full cloning ban early in the next legislative session. The controversy brewing over claims of a cloned infant may give Republicans the political capital they need to pass a bill that prohibits, or at least restricts, future efforts to clone embryos for biomedical and experimental research.

A solution could come in the form of a compromise bill to permanently ban reproductive cloning and impose a temporary moratorium on the cloning of embryos, to allow for wider public debate on ethical issues and risks women undergo to produce large quantities of fertilized eggs for research.

Research cloning and other avenues of embryo experimentation rely on thousands of readily available eggs taken from female donors. Although scientists, up until now, have primarily used frozen embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization, most admit that the growing research enterprise will soon outstrip supplies currently available in fertility clinics. Already, companies such as Advanced Cell Technologies have switched to paying female egg donors to “donate” dozens of eggs for their commercial laboratories.

A number of pro-choice public interest groups, including the Council for Responsible Genetics, have raised concerns that the drugs and surgical techniques involved in this process of egg retrieval may endanger women’s health. Lupron, a drug used to hyper-stimulate women’s ovaries, has not yet received FDA safety testing, and other similar ovulation drugs have been linked to cancer. Many thus see embryo research as a recipe for medical exploitation. Mary Landrieu, the sole Senate Democrat in support of the Brownback bill, has argued that embryo research will involve the commodification of women’s bodies and manipulation of those who are most economically vulnerable.

Others see the cloning issue as a slippery slope. According to Stuart Newman, Professor of Cell Biology at New York Medical College and a Board Member of the Council for Responsible Genetics, “once embryo manipulation is allowed to proceed, there will be calls, based on reasonable arguments from current stem cell biology, to extend the period from two weeks to two months and beyond.” The problem, says Newman, is that once the door is opened there are no scientifically cogent or enforceable principles that would justify not harvesting tissues from any particular embryonic or fetal stage.

The prospects for therapeutic uses of experimental cloning—in, for example, preparing regenerative tissue based on cloned embryonic stem cells—remain distant at best. Meanwhile, clinical research in the United States, including several projects at the National Institutes of Health, has demonstrated the reparative potential of adult stem cells. Sujatha Byravan, Executive Director at the Council for Responsible Genetics, says “the strong support for cloning may have less to do with promising science, and more to do with a fear of regulation among members of the research community and the biotechnology industry.”

For more information, contact Peter Shorett at 617-868-0870