U.S. HOUSE APPROVES BILL TO BAN HUMAN CLONING

WASHINGTON (August 3, 2001)--By a large margin, the U.S. House of Representatives has approved a bill to prohibit the creation of human embryos by cloning.

The bill, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act (H.R. 2505), was approved by the House on July 31 by a vote of 265-162. (See roll call chart, page 30.)

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) strongly supported the bill, which is sponsored by pro-life Reps. Dave Weldon (R-Fl.) and Bart Stupak (D-Mi.).

"By an overwhelming bipartisan vote, the House has acted to block the creation of human embryo farms--but the biotech firms will begin this ghoulish industry soon, unless the Senate also acts," said NRLC Federal Legislative Director Douglas Johnson after the vote.

President Bush praised the House vote, saying, "The moral issues posed by human cloning are profound and have implications for today and for future generations. 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."

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.) has already introduced a very similar bill (S. 790).

Linked to Embryo Stem Cell Issue

The human cloning issue is separate from, but related to, the ongoing debate over research using stem cells which would be obtained by killing human embryos who were created by the process of in vitro fertilization, in order to help infertile couples. Many thousands of such embryos are now in frozen storage in infertility laboratories.

In his August 9 televised address President Bush did not allow federal funding of stem cell research that would require the killing of human embryos. NRLC strongly opposes stem cell research that would require the destruction of human embryos. (See story, page one.)

The Weldon-Stupak bill would ban a cloning method known as "somatic cell nuclear transfer," in which genetic material from one person would be artificially transferred into a hollowed-out 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.

Many federal bioethics commissions and top cloning researchers have acknowledged that this process will produce human embryos--although for political purposes, some advocates of cloning are now engaged in an Orwellian attempt to deny this. (For documentation, see www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/Index.html. See also "The Amazing Vanishing Embryo Trick," by Douglas Johnson, page 14).

The bill does not ban the use of other cloning techniques to produce cells or tissues that do not involve creating a human embryo.

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 - - for medical purposes.

Human Cloning Near?

Researchers already have cloned sheep 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 legislation was demonstrated by a report on July 12 in the Washington Post that a major biotechnology firm, Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, already has a project underway to mass-produce human embryos by cloning, in order to use them in medical experimentation that will kill them.

The head of the firm, Michael West, told the Wall Street Journal (July 13) that actual human cloning will begin "soon." It is believed that other firms are engaged in similar efforts.

Under the Weldon-Stupak bill, creation of a cloned human embryo, or trafficking in such embryos, would be punishable by up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million.

Opposition by BIO

The Weldon-Stupak bill faced 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 practice as "therapeutic cloning" or "research cloning."

BIO and its allied lawmakers tried to block House passage of the bill by backing a competing measure - - called a "substitute amendment" - - that was sponsored by Reps. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) and Peter Deutsch (D-Fl.). The Greenwood-Deutsch proposal would have allowed laboratories registered with the federal government to create any number of human embryos by cloning, but also would have made it a crime to implant any such cloned embryo in a woman's womb. (BIO and its allies say they currently do not wish to use cloning to produce born babies, a practice they refer to as "reproductive cloning.") These provisions caused NRLC to label the Greenwood-Deutsch measure as "the clone-and-kill bill."

White House Statement

The day before the vote, the White House issued an official statement of administration policy in support of the Weldon-Stupak bill. The statement read in part:

"The Administration supports a ban on the cloning of human beings by somatic cell nuclear transfer. The Administration unequivocally is opposed to the cloning of human beings either for reproduction or for research. The moral and ethical issues posed by human cloning are profound and cannot be ignored in the quest for scientific discovery....

"The Administration is strongly opposed to any legislation that would prohibit human cloning for reproductive purposes but permit the creation of cloned embryos for research. Thus, the Administration would strongly oppose any substitute amendment that is similar or identical to the language of H.R. 2608 [Rep. Greenwood's bill], which would permit human embryos to be created and developed solely for research purposes."

House Debate

The House conducted a spirited debate on the issue for about three hours.

A leading opponent of the ban, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), said, "A clump of cells is not yet a person. It does not have feelings or sensations.... If it is not implanted in a woman's uterus, it will never become a person."

But House Republican Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tx.) argued, "Human beings should not be cloned to stock a medical junkyard of spare parts for experimentation." Cloning is "no better than medical strip-mining."

Rep. J. C. Watts (R-Ok.), the fourth-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, said, "This House should not be giving the green light to mad scientists to tinker with the gift of life...Cloning is an insult to humanity. It is science gone crazy."

Rep. David Wu (D-Or.) stressed that he supported legal abortion, but said, "This is too important a decision to be left to scientists and medical specialists. . . . This is about the limits of human wisdom and not about the limits of medical technology. The question that we must ask ourselves is whether it is proper to create potential human life for merely mechanistic purposes."

Greenwood, Deutsch, and other BIO-allied lawmakers argued that so-called "therapeutic cloning" is necessary to make effective use of embryonic stem cells in future therapies. For example, Deutsch said the Weldon-Stupak bill is "overly broad and will close the door to one of the most promising aspects of stem cell research."

NRLC's Johnson commented: "The real agenda of the biotech industry is now revealed. Lethal research on the embryos already created for infertile couples is only a stepping stone to the biotech industry's plan to mass-produce human embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them."

The Greenwood Amendment ultimately failed by a wide margin, 178-249.

Opponents of the Weldon-Stupak bill tried again to kill it through a procedural attack known as a "motion to recommit," offered by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Ca.). This motion, if adopted, would have gutted the bill by allowing human cloning if performed "in connection with the development or application of treatments" for any of a long list of diseases. This motion also failed, 175-251.

The House then passed the bill by a lopsided margin of 265-162. It was supported by 200 Republicans, 63 Democrats, and two independents. Nineteen Republicans and 143 Democrats opposed the ban. About 40 House members who support Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion on demand) voted to pass the bill.

"Human cloning is a critical pro-life issue, but it is not an abortion issue, because these embryos would be cloned and killed in the laboratory," noted NRLC's Johnson.

Following the House vote, Cardinal William Keeler, chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, reacted to the vote by echoing a statement made by Pope John Paul II on July 23: "This legislation is an important first step on 'the path to a truly humane future, in which man remains the master, not the product, of his technology.' "