Senate Democratic Leader Blocks Cloning Ban, Pushes for Approval of Clone-and-Kill Bill

[Editor's Note: Please see the Action Alert on the back cover to learn what you can do to help prevent Senate approval of a "clone and kill" bill that would pave the way for human embryo farms in the U.S. For the latest updates on the legislative situation, frequently visit the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org. The website now features a "Legislative Action Center" with powerful and easy-to-use tools to facilitate contacting your elected representatives with the right message at the right time.]

WASHINGTON (July 8, 2002) - - Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle (SD), backed by the great majority of Senate Democrats and a small group of Republicans, has blocked legislation to ban human cloning.

The House of Representatives passed such a ban a year ago. President Bush has repeatedly called on the Senate to pass identical legislation (S. 1899), authored by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.), and cosponsored by Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and 29 others.

But the bill has stalled in the Senate due to strong resistance from the biotechnology industry, some patients' advocacy groups, and many elements of the news media. These groups want to allow the use of cloning to create human embryos who will be killed to obtain their stem cells or for other types of medical research.

According to a report in the June 21 Boston Globe, because the Senate has failed to pass the ban, "many" biotech labs in the U.S. are "quietly preparing" to begin cloning human embryos for research.

"Right now, Senator Daschle and his allies are winning the battle to allow human embryo farms to open for business in the U.S.," commented NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.

Daschle and his allies are not content simply to block passage of the Brownback-Landrieu bill. They wish to win Senate approval of competing legislation, crafted in concert with the biotech industry, that would place federal law enforcement agencies in charge of ensuring that every cloned human embryo dies in research.

Senators who support the biotech-backed legislation tell their constituents that it would "ban human cloning" or "ban reproductive cloning." This is, they assert, a goal with which "everyone agrees." In reality, however, their legislation would permit human embryos to be "reproduced" in any numbers, and make it a crime to transfer any such cloned human embryo into a uterus "or the functional equivalent of a uterus." The legislation does not "ban human cloning" - - rather, it attempts to ban the survival of human clones.

Pro-life groups refer to this proposed scheme as "clone and kill."

Senators who advocate the clone and kill legislation have produced several versions, including S. 2439, sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and others. This group is working on a further refinement of their proposal, which Daschle says he will bring up for a vote as soon as supporters believe they can win the votes of 60 senators.

Under Senate rules, if 60 senators vote to "invoke cloture" on a bill, it usually will pass quickly and without major amendments. If 60 senators vote to invoke cloture on the clone and kill bill, Brownback and other anti-cloning senators would be unable to block it by filibuster.

On June 14, Senator Feinstein said, "We are very close today to that 60 vote necessity to move ahead with it." In late June, it was reported that the pro-cloning forces were privately claiming to have 58 senators pledged to support their bill.

Worse Than Nothing

Under the clone and kill legislation, "Members of the species homo sapiens would be cloned in huge numbers, and the FBI would be given the unethical responsibility of ensuring the destruction of every cloned human embryo," said NRLC's Johnson. "This is not a compromise or a 'partial ban' on human cloning, but a scheme for establishing an industry of human embryo farms."

Many senators who support the clone and kill bill deceptively insist that they support a "ban on human cloning" because they are aware that the public is strongly opposed to the policy incorporated in the bill. A Gallup poll released on May 16 found that the public by a 61-34% margin opposed "cloning of human embryos for use in medical research."

In remarks on the Senate floor on June 14, Feinstein said that the newest version of the bill would prohibit keeping any clone alive past 14 days.

Johnson said such a bill would constitute an unprecedented federal mandate for the killing of an entire class of members of the human species - - cloned human embryos. He commented, "Under this proposal, if someone calls the FBI to report that a researcher is harboring 15-day-old cloned human embryos, the feds would have to seize the embryos and kill them. The researcher would be charged with a federal felony: failure to kill cloned human embryos by the statutorily mandated execution date."

In a May 15 letter to Senator Brownback, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson strongly criticized the Specter-Feinstein bill and said he would recommend that President Bush veto any such legislation to allow "research cloning."

"The President does not believe that 'reproductive' and 'research' cloning should be treated differently, given that they both require the creation, exploitation, and destruction of human embryos," Thompson wrote, adding that the Specter-Feinstein bill "would put the federal government in the position of permitting the creation of human embryos for research purposes and then mandating their destruction . . . . [T]he Administration could not support any measure that purported to ban 'reproductive' cloning while authorizing 'research' cloning, and I would recommend to the President that he veto such a bill."

On the same day, the Department of Justice argued in testimony to a congressional panel that federal law enforcement agencies would face enormous problems in seeking to prevent the implantation of cloned human embryos, once they had already been created.

For example, the department said, "Law enforcement would be in the unenviable position of having to impose new and unprecedented scrutiny over doctors in fertility clinics and/or research facilities to ensure that only fertilized embryos were being transferred to would-be mothers." (The May 15 Department of Justice testimony is posted on the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org.)

Moratorium Proposed

In early June, in an attempt to win additional support from certain senators who were unwilling to support the total ban passed by the House, Senator Brownback said he would propose a two-year "moratorium" on cloning human embryos. This would require Congress to revisit the issue in two years.

On June 12, Daschle proposed a procedural arrangement under which the Senate would have voted both on Brownback's moratorium proposal and on the competing bill to allow research cloning - - but Brownback rejected the proposal because it was stacked to give advantage to the clone-and-kill bill. Daschle then said he had fulfilled his commitment to deal with the human cloning issue, and moved on to other matters.

In a press release, NRLC commented, "A May Gallup poll found 61% of Americans opposed to cloning human embryos for research, but Senator Daschle and most Senate Democrats have once again blocked the only bill that would really ban human cloning and human embryo farms. Daschle insisted on a procedure that would give maximum advantage to a phony ban that was crafted to please the powerful biotechnology industry lobby, rather than to really ban human cloning. Senator Brownback was right to reject Daschle's rigged arrangement."

Following his rejection of Daschle's proposal, Brownback commented, "It is clear that on the issue of cloning, the objective of the Senate Democrat majority is to obstruct the will of the vast majority of the American people, a bipartisan majority in the House, and the President. We will seek all possible avenues in our attempt to stop human cloning and get the current leadership to take this issue up fairly."

Resources on Cloning

The National Right to Life website (www.nrlc.org) contains factsheets and other key documents on human cloning, in the section headed "Human Cloning Documents." The website also includes powerful new tools for communicating with Congress on human cloning and other pro-life issues.

Many of the groups supporting the ban cooperate under a loose-knit coalition called "Americans to Ban Cloning," which maintains an informative website, www. cloninginformation.org. This website includes pro-cloning and anti-cloning TV and radio ads produced by various groups.

In a speech to anti-cloning advocates on April 10, President Bush strongly urged the Senate to pass the bill quickly. You can read or listen to the President's speech at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/04/print/20020410-4.html.