Science and the Bush Administration
Breaking the policy deadlock on cloning and assisted reproduction
Richard Hayes

Sunday, April 4, 2004

You wouldn't know it from the charged partisan debate here in the United States, but throughout the world new policies
on human genetic and reproductive technologies reflect a surprising degree of consensus. In Europe, Australia, Canada
and elsewhere, national policies on cloning, stem cells, infertility research and related topics are similar in spirit
and share key provisions:

-- They explicitly affirm technologies that have a real chance of preventing or curing disease.

-- They ban technologies that could harm children or open the door to new forms of high-tech commercial eugenics.

-- They ensure that any research involving human embryos is tightly regulated.

-- They establish publicly accountable means to review policies and make new ones.

-- They pose no risks for reproductive rights. (The new Canadian law, for example, was supported by feminists and
women's health leaders.)

Sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? In the United States, however, anything remotely having to do with
reproduction or embryos is viewed through the polarized framework of abortion politics. Policies that might be
interpreted as setting a legal precedent or giving a symbolic edge to one side or the other become the focus of intense
partisan pressure. The result has been stalemate and paralysis. In the absence of effective regulations, genetic and
reproductive technologies are being developed and promoted with inadequate attention to their impacts on both
individuals and society as a whole. Embryo research is conducted in secret and funded by anonymous donors, allowing
unnecessary, shoddy or even dangerous research to proceed freely while shortchanging potentially beneficial medical
research.

So it is encouraging to see a ray of light that could point to a break in the policy stalemate, and from an unexpected
source. Last week, President Bush's Council on Bioethics, headed by bioethicist Leon Kass, released a new report,
"Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies." The council's first report, issued in 2002,
reflected deep divisions among its members, mostly concerning embryo research. But the new report was endorsed
unanimously, by Catholic theologians and pro-cloning biotech researchers alike.

That's no mean feat. Although many assume that the commission must be stacked to favor anti-abortion, anti-research
policies, it really isn't. Remarkably, the policies suggested in the new report should be easily supported by pro-
choice, pro-research advocates, as well as people seeking assisted reproduction to overcome infertility.

The report states that the health and well-being of children born through the use of assisted reproduction
technologies, and the women who bear them, should be a primary guide to policy concerning these technologies. It
recommends increased federal funding for studies of the health and developmental impacts of new reproductive
technologies; improved reporting of success and failure rates by fertility clinics; new patient protections; and
greater oversight by professional committees. All are long overdue.

In addition, the report recommends that certain dangerous or socially unacceptable uses of genetic technology be
prohibited. These include: transferring human embryos into animals; the creation of human-animal hybrids; cloning to
make babies; the purchase and sale of human embryos; and the use of human embryos for experiments beyond a set number
of days. The report steers clear of topics on which council members remain divided, such as stem-cell research.

The important point is that the council's recommendations would be beneficial in themselves, and would not skew the
debate over still-unresolved policies. Until now, opposition by religious conservatives to all human embryo research
has been met by opposition from the scientific and biotech community to even reasonable regulations and controls. Those
in the middle -- the great majority of Americans -- have been forced to choose between two extremes. The new report by
the President's Council on Bioethics is a first step toward policies that could break the deadlock over human genetic
and reproductive technology in the United States.

Richard Hayes ([log in to unmask]) is executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society, a
pro-choice public-interest organization in Oakland working for responsible social governance of the new human genetic
technologies.

SOURCE: Page E - 5 San Francisco Chronicle, CA
http://tinyurl.com/2v7je

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