Bioethics Panel Nudges Lawmakers
By Kristen Philipkoski

02:00 AM Apr. 01, 2004 PT

President Bush's Council on Bioethics released a report Thursday on reproductive biotechnologies that could finally
push the U.S. government to an agreement on human-cloning legislation.

The United States is one of the few developed countries without a law regulating human cloning, mainly because
legislators have bound together the two different types of cloning: the kind to create a baby (reproductive cloning),
and the kind that scientists want to use to develop stem cells for potential medicines (therapeutic cloning, or cloning
for biomedical research).

Conflating the two types of cloning is a problem because while many scientists favor therapeutic cloning, almost
everyone agrees that reproductive cloning should be illegal, because the procedure is still experimental in humans.

The council believes it has come up with language in Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New
Biotechnologies to finally separate these conjoined twins. It suggests drafting legislation that limits baby-making to
one method: "the union of egg and sperm."

That would exclude reproductive cloning, which does not require an egg and sperm, only a human egg and some cells from
the individual to be cloned. In reproductive cloning, the cells are inserted into the egg, zapped with electricity or
chemicals to begin cell division, and voila, a clone -- if it works, which it often does not.

Therapeutic cloning should be dealt with separately, the panel said. The report recommends allowing researchers to use
embryos for research if they have developed for no more than 14 days after fertilization. At that point, the embryos
would consist of only a few hundred cells, and would fit on the head of a pin. That recommendation is more
controversial because some legislators believe using even two-week-old embryos equals taking a human life.

"That's at least a rational view of the whole thing and is consistent with the Hatch-Feinstein bill," said Bernie
Siegel, director of the Genetics Policy Institute in Coral Gables, Florida, speaking about the panel's suggestion. "I
think most disease advocates and patients would think that is a very reasonable way to allow research to advance."

Leon Kass, chairman of the council, said this report is really about increased oversight of reproductive technologies
like in-vitro fertilization.

"The council has already issued its report on cloning and it still stands by its recommendations in that report," Kass
said in an e-mail. "This report is not about cloning. It is about regulation of new biotechnologies in the area of
assisted reproduction. The recommendations we've offered reflect our search for common ground and we hope all
reasonable Americans agree."

Regardless, cloning and stem-cell research were the topics of many of the authors' wide-ranging personal statements
which were included in an appendix. Several criticized the president's stem-cell policy, and expressed hope that the
report would offer an alternative.

Back on Aug. 9, 2001, Bush announced that researchers would be prohibited from using federal funds to perform embryonic
stem-cell research on any stem-cell lines derived after 9 p.m. that day, a move that many researchers say significantly
slowed progress in finding treatments for diseases. Bush said at the time that more than 60 stem-cell lines were
available, but the National Institutes of Health said recently there are actually only 17.

Scientists take stem cells from early embryos. They are master cells that can develop into almost any kind of cell in
the human body. Researchers want to work with embryos cloned from patients to eliminate the possibility of immune
rejection.

"Whatever one's view of the moral status of the embryo, it is difficult to understand the moral distinction between
research on stem-cell lines created before 9 p.m. on Aug. 9, 2001, and research on stem-cell lines created since,"
wrote five council members, Daniel Foster, Michael Gazzaniga, Janet Rowley, Michael Sandel and James Wilson.

Gazzaniga's personal statement asks, in reference to Korean researchers who were recently first to obtain stem cells
from a cloned human embryo: "Tell me, does any reader feel diminished in the past few days? Do the 1 million Americans
who suffer from Parkinson's disease, whose human dignity has been brutally robbed from them, feel an even greater
affront?"

Meanwhile, a joint statement issued by council members Robert George, Mary Ann Glendon, Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, William
Hurlbut and Gilbert Meilaender interprets the report differently. They say that because the report does not address
therapeutic cloning directly, "readers may therefore rightly conclude that the council's earlier majority
recommendation (in its report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry) that a four-year moratorium on all
cloning-for-biomedical-research should be instituted continues to be the council's position."

Legislation drafted by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) would outlaw reproductive
cloning but allow therapeutic cloning. Congress has not yet discussed the bill.

The council's report is already meeting resistance from Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), who drafted an anti-cloning bill
to outlaw both reproductive and therapeutic cloning, with penalties of up to $1 million in fines and 10 years in
prison.

"I am concerned with the council's decision to seek restrictions on embryo research after a certain point; a policy
decision which ultimately leaves the young human vulnerable to attack during the first days of life," Brownback said in
a statement Thursday. "Tragically, some council members have already announced they supported this time limit not out
of respect for early human life, but in order to reverse current federal funding policies that respect the human embryo
from the beginning."

In February 2003, the House of Representatives passed a counterpart to Brownback's bill drafted by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-
Florida). But the Senate, which is more divided on cloning, has yet to take up the issue.

It's unclear when Congress might discuss cloning and stem-cell research again.

"Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) has previously indicated his willingness to bring up Sen. Brownback's
legislation, but we don't have a specific timeline," said Aaron Groote, a spokesman for Brownback, in an e-mail.

Feinstein and Weldon's offices did not return phone calls requesting comment for this story.

What's important, the council members said, is that although they have differing views on reproductive issues, they
were able to come to agree on a common denominator: Ban reproductive cloning.

"Our recommendations include only provisions that the entire Council Could agree to unanimously," said O. Carter Snead,
general counsel for the council on bioethics, in an e-mail. "These recommendations are intended to represent those
things that people who disagree on fundamental questions (like the moral status of the embryo) can give their assent
to, even as the debates regarding those disagreements persist."

If Congress can do the same, the United States might finally be able to pass human cloning legislation.

"The report is to the president and then the next step is up to Congress," Kass said. "We hope Congress regards this as
a serious and new addition to the public debate."

SOURCE: Wired News
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,62914,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

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