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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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn