List members,
The PAN Forum is May 19th-21. On May 21st forum attendees will have the
opportunity to visit their Congressional representatives and discuss
issues like this one. If you are new to advocacy -  PAN will be holdinig
workshops to prepare you for these visits and will make the appointments
for you. It could be a very crucial time to make your opinions heard -
according to this article - it could be just before the Senate is
scheduled to debate these bills. Your voice can make a difference in the
outcome!
I encourage whoever is able to attend the PAN Forum.
 Linda

Forwarded from Greg Wasson, Parkinson's advocate:
FROM:
Washington Fax
April 1, 2002

Cloning bill options set for Senate floor debate before Memorial Day,
Daschle aide says

David Glendenning

Two competing human cloning ban measures will be taken up by the full
Senate and voted on before Congress leaves for the Memorial Day recess in
late May, a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-SD,
said March 28.

The new commitment comes after energy and campaign finance legislation
pushed back the original leadership plan for a March debate.

Floor debate in May on the contentious issue could coincide with Senate
confirmation hearings for Elias Zerhouni, who as White House nominee for
National Institutes of Health director will come under close
congressional scrutiny for his position on human cloning.

While Zerhouni has not yet weighed in on either therapeutic or
reproductive cloning, President Bush praised him during the March 26
nomination announcement for "sharing my view that human life is precious
and should not be exploited or destroyed for the benefits of others."
Bush himself supports a total ban on the cloning of human embryos.

Zerhouni's confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education,
Labor and Pensions Committee could happen as early as May, a spokesman
for HELP Chair Edward Kennedy, D-MA, explained, heightening the chance
the Senate will not have completed its consideration of the cloning ban
options before the NIH nominee appears before lawmakers.

Zerhouni's potential as NIH director to guide the policies behind all
federally funded human cell research "could be a competing factor with
the consideration of cloning bans on the floor," the aide predicted,
adding, "I don't know if it will get to the point where it actually
interferes with that debate, but it might."

Kennedy himself simply characterized Zerhouni as a "distinguished
scientist with an impressive career as a scientific administrator' after
the White House announced the nomination. The Massachusetts Democrat said
he eagerly awaits HELP hearings to determine Zerhouni's position on
research policy. The committee must wait until government officials
conduct a full background check on the candidate before it can schedule
any hearings or pose policy questions to Zerhouni.

The inclusion of human cloning in the Senate's spring agenda is based on
a promise Daschle made last year to Sens. Sam Brownback, R-KA, who will
push for a total ban on human cloning (S. 1899), and Arlen Specter, R-PA,
who has cosponsored a reproductive cloning ban that would preserve
somatic cell nuclear transfer for research purposes (S. 1893).

The cloning issue promised to be more evenly divided than last year's
related stem cell research debate even before Bush officially announced
his pick for NIH director. Specter and his partial ban bill co-author Tom
Harkin, D-IA, expressed reservations about Zerhouni when the Johns
Hopkins University radiologist was the presumptive nominee, based on
unconfirmed reports of his stance against the practice of therapeutic
cloning and against federal funding of stem cell research.

Many policy experts and lawmakers also have kept a close eye on Sen. Bill
Frist, R-TN, since the cloning issue began to appear in Capitol Hill
hearings and floor speeches. Frist, who has come out in favor of the
Brownback total ban on human cloning, has established himself as an
influential advisor to President Bush and many GOP members on health
policy; Frist proposed several principles on federal funding of stem cell
research during the summer of 2001 that Bush later adopted in his August
executive order.

While Frist's stance could guide the positions of the White House and
wavering Republican senators on the cloning bans, his influence likely
also will effect some modifications to Brownback's legislation that would
render its scope less broad.

Frist has identified as troublesome a provision in the total ban that
would make it illegal to import medical technologies and procedures
foreign scientists develop using cloning research.

Frist's spokeswoman noted the senator's support for the Brownback ban is
not contingent on the satisfaction of these concerns, but that Frist will
lobby bill handlers to make the appropriate changes when the bill comes
up in late April or May. Frist so far has declined to join the cosponsor
list for S. 1899, which currently stands at 27 members.

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