Dispite GWB's efforts, it will happen sooner or later. Probably later. :sigh:
Thanks to Dr. Bob for these articles.
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President Bush Leads Push to Outlaw Clone Research
Tue Apr 9, 5:58 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Opponents of cloning research began a push this week to outlaw all forms of human cloning, including experiments aimed at helping patients produce their own tissue and organ transplants.
In a speech at the White House on Wednesday, President Bush (news - web sites) is expected to ask the Senate to pass legislation that would ban all human cloning experiments. Supporters of the bill were planning their own gatherings, replete with movie stars, ethicists, religious leaders and scientists.
Both sides of the debate are trying to tug at the heartstrings of undecided senators, while at the same time deploying hard science and cool reasoning.
Cloning is one of several issues Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle wants to address between now and late May. A White House spokesman said Bush wanted to make his feelings clear to Congress as it returns from an Easter/Passover break.
The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive ban on human cloning, including so-called therapeutic cloning that involves making a very early embryo from a patient's cells and using it as a source of stem cells.
Embryonic stem cells have the capacity to be made into any kind of tissue in the body, and scientists say they could be transplanted without the use of immune-suppressing drugs because they would be the patient's own tissue.
Scientists say they might be used to treat a range of diseases from Alzheimer's to juvenile diabetes, and they say the embryo would never be destined for a woman's womb.
But opponents say it is wrong to destroy a human embryo, no matter how early it is and no matter what the reason. Opponents also argue there are other scientific avenues available.
These include the use of adult stem cells, which can be found in a person's tissues and which, research suggests, might also be trained to grow into a range of different tissues.
Many scientists say it is too early to tell which approach might work better and support keeping all avenues open.
RIVAL BILLS SEEK TO SETTLE DEBATE
Rival bills in the Senate could settle the issue. One, sponsored by Kansas Republican Sam Brownback and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, would outlaw all forms of human cloning.
As written, it would also outlaw the import of technology developed outside the United States using human cloning -- wording that disturbs even some supporters of the ban as it could mean medical breakthroughs made in Britain, for example, where cloning is legal, could not be used to help Americans.
A bill sponsored by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein would outlaw reproductive cloning, aimed at creating a cloned baby, but allow therapeutic cloning research to go on.
Both bills have a range of backers, with moderate Republicans such as Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and liberal Democrats like Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts supporting the Feinstein legislation, and environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth (news - web sites) joining political conservatives like Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Frist in backing the Brownback ban.
"After considering the medical progress that is being made and will be made through stem cell research and after considering the overwhelming ethical concerns about human embryo cloning, I conclude that a comprehensive ban on all human cloning is the right policy at this time," Frist told the Senate on Tuesday.
Frist, a transplant surgeon, said he was working hard to educate his Senate colleagues about both the science and the ethics involved. So are supporters of Feinstein's bill.
"It's scary," Michael Manganiello, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research and spokesman for the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, said in a telephone interview. "They are talking about jailing doctors."
Both the National Right to Life Foundation and Manganiello's group have targeted advertising campaigns at states with senators who are considered on the fence, such as Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, and Georgia Democrat Sen. Zell Miller.
"We need the moderate Democrats," said Manganiello. Reeve, best known for his film role as Superman, hopes stem cell research can heal his spine, injured in a riding accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down.
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Bush Backs Ban of All Human Cloning
Wed Apr 10, 2:55 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a speech evoking images of embryo farms, custom-made children and desperate women pressured into selling their eggs, President Bush (news - web sites) urged the Senate on Wednesday to outlaw all forms of human cloning.
Saying human cloning had moved from science fiction into science, Bush pressed for a ban not only on cloning aimed at producing a baby, but on techniques aimed at helping patients grow their own tissue transplants.
His opinion clashes with that of many in the scientific community, which has broadly backed research using cloning techniques, but Bush said he had moral authority on his side.
"As we seek to improve human life, we must always preserve human dignity," Bush said in a White House address. "And therefore we must prevent human cloning by stopping it before it starts."
To allow cloning would be to move toward a society "in which human beings are grown for spare body parts and children are engineered to custom specifications -- and that's not acceptable."
Bush praised a bill sponsored by Kansas Republican Sen. Sam Brownback and Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu that would ban all forms of cloning, including somatic cell nuclear transfer, the method used so far to make cloned sheep, mice, pigs and a cat.
It involves clearing the nucleus from an egg and inserting the nucleus from an adult cell. This programs the egg to start dividing as if it had been fertilized by a sperm. If implanted into a womb, the embryo can grow into a baby.
Also called therapeutic cloning, many scientists want to experiment with this method to see if it offers a way to help patients grow their own tissue transplants. They say the initial ball of cells is only technically an embryo and is in no way destined to become a human baby.
RIVAL BILL GETS BIPARTISAN SUPPORT
Senators who support therapeutic cloning said on Wednesday they were teaming up with a bill to rival Brownback's that would outlaw reproductive cloning -- meant to create a living baby -- but allow therapeutic cloning.
Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter and Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Dianne Feinstein of California and Tom Harkin of Iowa said they would combine two existing bills into one and try to drum up support for it.
"It would be unconscionable for Congress to prohibit medical research that offers hope to so many people with crippling and often incurable diseases," Feinstein said.
The House of Representatives has already passed a comprehensive ban on all forms of cloning. To become law, a bill must be passed by both the House and Senate and then signed by the president.
Bush says he will veto any bill that allows any kind of human cloning.
"Do we impede progress in some of the most debilitating diseases known to man or do we allow research to go forward as long as we ban human cloning?" Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle asked.
"The president wants to ban it all and I think he's wrong and I think the American people are on our side."
Brownback says he has 29 co-sponsors. "This issue must be addressed by the Senate before the technology overtakes the debate," he told a news conference.
Earlier on Wednesday 40 Nobel laureate scientists, including some of the country's leading genetic and cancer researchers, released a letter urging senators to support legislation that would allow therapeutic cloning.
"Senator Brownback's legislation ... would have a chilling effect on all scientific research in the United States," they wrote.
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Remarks by the President on Human Cloning Legislation
The East Room
1:18 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all so very much for coming to the White House. It's my honor to welcome you to the people's house.
I particularly want to honor three folks who I had the honor of meeting earlier: Joni Tada, Jim Kelly and Steve McDonald. I want to thank you for your courage, I want to thank you for your wisdom, I want to thank you for your extraordinary perseverence and faith. They have triumphed in the face of physical disability and share a deep commitment to medicine that is practiced ethically and humanely.
All of us here today believe in the promise of modern medicine. We're hopeful about where science may take us. And we're also here because we believe in the principles of ethical medicine.
As we seek to improve human life, we must always preserve human dignity. (Applause.) And therefore, we must prevent human cloning by stopping it before it starts. (Applause.)
I want to welcome Tommy Thompson, who is the Secretary of Health and Human Services, a man who is doing a fine job for America. (Applause.) I want to thank members from the United States Congress, members from both political parties who are here. I particularly want to thank Senator Brownback and Senator Landrieu for sponsoring a bill about which I'm going to speak. (Applause.)
As well, we've got Senator Frist and Senator Bond and Senator Hutchinson and Senator Santorum and Congressman Weldon, Stupak, and eventually Smith and Kerns. They just don't realize -- (applause) -- thank you all for coming -- they seem to have forgotten we start things on time here in the White House. (Laughter.)
We live in a time of tremendous medical progress. A little more than a year ago, scientists first cracked the human genetic code -- one of the most important advances in scientific history. Already, scientists are developing new diagnostic tools so that each of us can know our risk of disease and act to prevent them.
One day soon, precise therapies will be custom made for our own genetic makeup. We're on the threshold of historic breakthroughs against AIDS and Alzheimer's Disease and cancer and diabetes and heart disease and Parkinson's Disease. And that's incredibly positive.
Our age may be known to history as the age of genetic medicine, a time when many of the most feared illnesses were overcome.
Our age must also be defined by the care and restraint and responsibility with which we take up these new scientific powers.
Advances in biomedical technology must never come at the expense of human conscience. (Applause.) As we seek what is possible, we must always ask what is right, and we must not forget that even the most noble ends do not justify any means. (Applause.)
Science has set before us decisions of immense consequence. We can pursue medical research with a clear sense of moral purpose or we can travel without an ethical compass into a world we could live to regret. Science now presses forward the issue of human cloning. How we answer the question of human cloning will place us on one path or the other.
Human cloning is the laboratory production of individuals who are genetically identical to another human being. Cloning is achieved by putting the genetic material from a donor into a woman's egg, which has had its nucleus removed. As a result, the new or cloned embryo is an identical copy of only the donor. Human cloning has moved from science fiction into science.
One biotech company has already began producing embryonic human clones for research purposes. Chinese scientists have derived stem cells from cloned embryos created by combining human DNA and rabbit eggs. Others have announced plans to produce cloned children, despite the fact that laboratory cloning of animals has lead to spontaneous abortions and terrible, terrible abnormalities.
Human cloning is deeply troubling to me, and to most Americans. Life is a creation, not a commodity. (Applause.) Our children are gifts to be loved and protected, not products to be designed and manufactured. Allowing cloning would be taking a significant step toward a society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to custom specifications; and that's not acceptable.
In the current debate over human cloning, two terms are being used: reproductive cloning and research cloning. Reproductive cloning involves creating a cloned embryo and implanting it into a woman with the goal of creating a child. Fortunately, nearly every American agrees that this practice should be banned. Research cloning, on the other hand, involves the creation of cloned human embryos which are then destroyed to derive stem cells.
I believe all human cloning is wrong, and both forms of cloning ought to be banned, for the following reasons. First, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be unethical. Research cloning would contradict the most fundamental principle of medical ethics, that no human life should be exploited or extinguished for the benefit of another. (Applause.)
Yet a law permitting research cloning, while forbidding the birth of a cloned child, would require the destruction of nascent human life. Secondly, anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies.
Third, the benefits of research cloning are highly speculative. Advocates of research cloning argue that stem cells obtained from cloned embryos would be injected into a genetically identical individual without risk of tissue rejection. But there is evidence, based on animal studies, that cells derived from cloned embryos may indeed be rejected.
Yet even if research cloning were medically effective, every person who wanted to benefit would need an embryonic clone of his or her own, to provide the designer tissues. This would create a massive national market for eggs and egg donors, and exploitation of women's bodies that we cannot and must not allow. (Applause.)
I stand firm in my opposition to human cloning. And at the same time, we will pursue other promising and ethical ways to relieve suffering through biotechnology. This year for the first time, federal dollars will go towards supporting human embryonic stem cell research consistent with the ethical guidelines I announced last August.
The National Institutes of Health is also funding a broad range of animal and human adult stem cell research. Adult stem cells which do not require the destruction of human embryos and which yield tissues which can be transplanted without rejection are more versatile that originally thought.
We're making progress. We're learning more about them. And therapies developed from adult stem cells are already helping suffering people.
I support increasing the research budget of the NIH, and I ask Congress to join me in that support. And at the same time, I strongly support a comprehensive law against all human cloning. And I endorse the bill -- wholeheartedly endorse the bill -- sponsored by Senator Brownback and Senator Mary Landrieu. (Applause.)
This carefully drafted bill would ban all human cloning in the United States, including the cloning of embryos for research. It is nearly identical to the bipartisan legislation that last year passed the House of Representatives by more than a 100-vote margin. It has wide support across the political spectrum, liberals and conservatives support it, religious people and nonreligious people support it. Those who are pro-choice and those who are pro-life support the bill.
This is a diverse coalition, united by a commitment to prevent the cloning and exploitation of human beings. (Applause.) It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber. (Applause.)
I'm an incurable optimist about the future of our country. I know we can achieve great things. We can make the world more peaceful, we can become a more compassionate nation. We can push the limits of medical science. I truly believe that we're going to bring hope and healing to countless lives across the country. And as we do, I will insist that we always maintain the highest of ethical standards.
Thank you all for coming. (Applause.) God bless.
END 1:33 P.M. EDT
posted 04-12-2002 20:30
