Cloning Bills Proliferate in U

Cloning Bills Proliferate in U.S. Congress

SCIENCE POLICY

Gretchen Vogel

Science

Since members of the Raëlian religious movement announced in March that they plan to clone a baby in the United States (Science, 6 April, p. 31), anticloning bills have multiplied in both houses of the U.S. Congress. Several scientific organizations fear, however, that legislative attempts to ban reproductive cloning will also block research on "therapeutic" cloning that aims, for instance, to produce genetically matched embryonic stem (ES) cells and coax them to develop into a specific cell type to treat diseases such as Parkinson's.

That's just what Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) wants. He has been an outspoken critic of ES cell research as well as cloning because it involves destruction of an embryo. (To produce genetically matched cells, researchers would use nuclear transfer to create an embryo with the same DNA as a patient, allow the embryo to grow for a few days, and then culture a line of stem cells.) Brownback, who presided over a 1 May hearing of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space, has introduced legislation that would outlaw both types of human cloning, imposing a $1 million fine and 10 years in prison on anyone convicted of transferring a human cell nucleus into an egg.

At the hearing, Carl Feldbaum of the Biotechnology Industry Organization in Washington, D.C., and developmental biologist Rudolph Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge agreed that reproductive cloning would be unsafe and unwise. But they argued that therapeutic cloning holds great promise for treating certain diseases and urged that any legislation allow such work to continue.

Countering that view, several witnesses argued that therapeutic cloning is immoral and unnecessary because, they asserted, stem cells derived from adult tissues are as promising as embryonic cells. Some also argued that therapeutic cloning was bound to lead to reproductive cloning. The hardest task scientifically, said bioethicist Leon Kass of the University of Chicago, is creating the embryonic clone; transferring it to a womb is easy. Kass, who helped draft Brownback's bill, told the hearing that a ban on all nuclear transfer experiments with human cells "is the only realistic chance we have of preventing [reproductive] cloning."

Three of the four other bills introduced to date to regulate human cloning are less draconian than Brownback's. In the House, a bill sponsored by Brian Kerns (R-IN) would prohibit only "reproductive cloning," outlawing the transfer of an embryo created by nuclear transfer into a womb. A second, introduced by Cliff Stearns (R-FL), would prohibit federal funding for therapeutic or reproductive human cloning research. A third, sponsored by Vern Ehlers (R-MI), would outlaw all nuclear transfer in human cells "unless the nucleus of the human somatic cell has been modified so that the cell cannot develop to completion." In the Senate, Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) has introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of cloning techniques "for the purpose of initiating or attempting to initiate a human pregnancy." Another bill is expected in the next few weeks from Representative James Greenwood (R-PA) that would prohibit reproductive cloning, according to his spokesperson, but allow research on obtaining stem cells.

It is too early to know which bills, if any, might make it to the floor for debate, says David Moore of the Association of American Medical Colleges, much less whether any might pass. Science advocates will be following them closely.

Category: 33. Cloning