By Arj Arjunan
Daily Bruin Contributor
A vote by the U.S. House of Representatives last week may be the
first step toward a ban on all forms of human cloning.
On July 31, the House voted 265-162 in favor of HR 1644, the
Human Cloning Prohibition Act, a bill proposed by Congressman Dave
Weldon, R-Florida.
This week, Edward McCabe, a professor in the human genetics
department at UCLA, and other researchers will attend a meeting in
Washington, D.C. sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences. The
meeting will bring together people from all over the world to
consider recommendations on the biomedical issues in human cloning,
McCabe said.
Meanwhile, Brendan Curry, spokesman for Weldon, said the vote
for a total ban reflected House members’ caution on human
cloning. The vote demonstrated an understanding of the moral costs
associated with human cloning, he said.
“If we allow research in experimental cloning on embryos,
we’re flirting with people implanting those embryos in a
woman’s womb,” Curry said.
Curry praised the decision by lawmakers, saying they addressed
critical moral and ethical questions concerning what it means to be
human before scientists move forward with medical research
involving human cloning.
The decision came after a vote against an amendment that would
have limited the bill’s scope to a ban on reproductive
cloning.
The failed amendment drew a distinction between reproductive
cloning that could produce cloned human beings and therapeutic
cloning that could produce stem cells to potentially treat a host
of now intractable afflictions, including Parkinson’s disease
and juvenile diabetes.
Therapeutic cloning involves the creation of an embryo using the
nucleus of cells from a patient and a donated egg with a removed
nucleus. Scientists argue that using stem cells from cloned embryos
would increase the likelihood that a patient’s immune system
will not reject the transplanted cells.
Tom Tureen, the official spokesman for Advanced Cell Technology,
Inc., a biotechnology company, said a total ban on all forms of
human cloning ignores the promise of stem cells derived from
therapeutic cloning.
Tureen added that using stem cells from embryos left over from
fertility clinics does not offer the same scientific promise as
stem cells derived from artificially created embryos.
“While (in vitro fertilization) tissue is useful for
research and might be helpful in a limited number of clinical
applications, it is not likely to play a significant role in the
treatment of common illnesses such as heart disease or
diabetes,” he said. “To regenerate diseased tissue,
cells with genomes identical to that of each patient will be needed
and IVF stem cells, created by merging two unrelated genomes,
cannot meet this requirement.”
Anne Wilson, a senior legislative assistant for Congressman
Peter Deutsch, D-Florida, one of the authors of the failed
amendment to the bill, said the Republican leadership wanted a vote
last week, when it knew members of Congress lacked information on
the issue.
“(House Majority Leader Dick) Armey, R-Texas, knew exactly
what he was doing when he called a vote,” she said.
“The leadership knew people weren’t
educated.”
She said conservatives who support stem cell research used this
vote to reaffirm their conservatism to their constituents.
Tureen shared Wilson’s feelings that more education on the
implications of therapeutic cloning for stem cell research is
needed. He said the disdain for reproductive cloning should not
influence the debate over therapeutic cloning.
“By helping the public understand that therapeutic cloning
merely enhances the body’s considerable ability to heal
itself and clarifying the distinction between cells created for
therapy and cells created for reproduction, we will serve the
public, science and, most of all, patients,” he said.
The U.S. Senate plans to begin debate on a human cloning bill in
the fall after an August recess. The Senate’s bill, like the
one which passed in the House, does not draw a distinction between
cloning for reproduction and cloning for therapy.
But some say support in the Senate for the bill may be hard to
come by.
“Support in the Senate is limited,” Wilson said.
“They are more cautious.”
But Curry contested Wilson’s remarks, saying liberals and
conservatives in the House found common ground, voting for the ban
and that the same could happen in the Senate. He added that Senate
Majority Leader, Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota has expressed
reservations about human cloning.