House Backs Ban on Human Cloning

August 1, 2001 New York Times

House Backs Ban on Human Cloning for Any Objective
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

WASHINGTON, July 31 < After an impassioned debate that pitted
the promise of cures for disease against the horror of making babies
that are genetic replicas of adults, the House of Representatives voted
by a wide margin today to ban cloning, not only for reproduction but
also for medical research.

The bipartisan 265-to-162 vote came after lawmakers rejected a less
restrictive measure that would have prohibited making babies by cloning
while leaving open the door for "therapeutic cloning" experiments in
which scientists would create embryos that could be used to treat disease.

Therapeutic cloning is legal in Britain. The far-reaching bill the House
adopted, which is backed by President Bush, would not only prohibit it,
but would also outlaw the sale of treatments developed from it.

"I think the House spoke very, very loudly today that this is morally and
ethically inappropriate," said Representative Dave Weldon, a Florida
Republican who was the bill's chief sponsor. "It clearly sends a message
that there is a place we don't want to go, and that is the manufacture of
scientific embryos for research."

The cloning debate is tangled up with another scientific controversy steeped
in politics, that of embryonic stem cell research. The House action < the
first time lawmakers have voted on cloning < comes as President Bush is
weighing whether to permit federal financing for studies on stem cells
derived from human embryos, and it complicates both the politics of the
debate and the business of stem cell science.

President Bush praised the House vote.

"The moral issues posed by human cloning are profound and have implications
for today and for future generations," he said in a statement issued by the
White House. "Today's overwhelming and bipartisan House action to prohibit
human cloning is a strong ethical statement, which I commend. We must
advance the promise and cause of science, but must do so in a way that
honors and respects life."

But the vote against cloning does not necessarily dim the prospects for
Congress to approve federally financed stem cell research should President
Bush come out against it. Lawmakers say that is because those studies would
be limited to cells extracted from embryos that would otherwise be discarded
by fertility clinics, which does not seem as extreme to many people as
therapeutic cloning.

"People see a difference between the idea of stem cell research and
cloning," said Representative Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat
who voted for the less restrictive measure. "The idea of cloning is very
terrifying because it is creating a copy of another human being. I think
members haven't looked at all the nuances."

Stem cells are extracted from human embryos, when they are tiny clusters
of no more than 300 cells; the work attracts intense criticism from abortion
opponents and religious conservatives because the embryos, which they view
as human life, are destroyed by the experiments. Because stem cells can grow
into any type of tissue in the body, scientists regard them as the building
blocks of a new era of regenerative medicine, in which doctors will heal
patients using their own tissues.

But to realize the full promise of stem cells, many experts say, the cells
must be compatible with patients' immune systems. That is their rationale
for therapeutic cloning; by creating embryos that contain patients' own DNA,
they say, they could develop tissues that would be an exact match for
patients.

Already, a Massachusetts company, Advanced Cell Technology, has announced
its intention to conduct therapeutic cloning experiments; that work would
become illegal should the House bill become law.

"It is disappointing that we are not having a more reasoned debate," said
Mike West, the company's chief executive, in an interview tonight. He
described the discussion on the House floor as "two hours of rampant
misinformation."

Representative James Greenwood, the Pennsylvania Republican and sponsor
of the bill that would have permitted therapeutic cloning, described the House
vote today as "flat-earth kind of thinking," and added, "It has no basis in
science, and it's not compassionate."

The bill, which makes cloning a crime punishable by up to 10 years in
prison, faces uncertain prospects in the Senate, where Sam Brownback,
Republican of Kansas, has introduced similar legislation. Mr. Brownback
proclaimed today's vote in the House "a great day for humanity" and said
that while he did not have a count of senators who might stand with him, he
was working to build a "left-right coalition."

That kind of coalition helped the bill pass the House; 63 Democrats joined
with 2 independents and 200 Republicans to assure the bill's passage. Some
of these lawmakers favor stem cell research on frozen embryos, but have
drawn the line at therapeutic cloning.

Some lawmakers say this kind of line-drawing will enable conservatives to
support stem cell research without fear of reprisal from abortion opponents.
"It gives them the ability to say, `I'm a reasonable person, I'm not a
crazy, I don't want human cloning," said Peter Deutsch, Democrat of Florida
and a co-sponsor of the Greenwood bill.

Biotechnology industry officials described today's vote as a step backward
for medical research. And abortion opponents saw it as an important victory.

"The House has acted to block the creation of embryo farms," said Douglas
Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right-to-Life Committee. "But the
biotech firms will begin this ghoulish industry soon unless the Senate also
acts."

There is broad consensus among lawmakers that human cloning, the creating
of babies that are identical genetic copies of adults, is morally repugnant.
And many lawmakers today warned that if therapeutic cloning went forward,
scientists would step onto a slippery slope that would inevitably lead to
cloning people.

"The world is waiting for the United States to set the moral tone against
this experimentation," said Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.,
Republican of Wisconsin. "If scientists are permitted to clone embryos, we
can look forward to embryo farms where embryos will be stockpiled and
mass marketed."

Backers of Mr. Greenwood's measure, however, argued strongly that banning
therapeutic cloning would be akin to denying life-saving therapies to
millions of Americans who suffer from diabetes, Alzheimer's disease,
Parkinson's disease and a variety of other ailments.

Even so, health advocacy groups, which have been waging a vocal campaign
to persuade Mr. Bush to permit federal financing of embryonic stem cell
research, were noticeably quiet on the cloning bill. Some saw the House vote
as a foregone conclusion.

"What is unfortunate is that cloning conjures up these images of
Frankenstein and horrible science, and it is really just a pejorative term
for cell therapy," said one advocate for patients, who spoke on the
condition that she not be named.

She added: "Some of the members of Congress we have worked really hard
to get on our side on embryonic stem cell research are either unsure of where
they are on cloning, or are against it, and we don't want to alienate those
members."

To clone, technically, means to copy. But cloning was barely on the radar
screen of policy makers and scientists until 1997, when scientists in
Scotland announced they had cloned a lamb, Dolly, from an adult sheep.

The following year, the Senate considered legislation that would have banned
cloning, but Democrats blocked the Republican-backed measure from coming
up for a vote.

Cloning challenges the conventional wisdom that embryos must be created from
the union of egg and sperm. And so today's debate sounded at times more like
a discourse in theology than a political discussion, with lawmakers
expounding on matters like whether embryos created through cloning are
embryos at all.

"It is not an embryo," insisted Mr. Deutsch, of Florida. "It is not creating
life by any definition of creating life."

Mr. Weldon replied, "That's like saying Dolly is not alive."