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CLONING ADVANCE SPURS NEW DEBATE
Controversial effort brings immediate calls for ban from senators, President
WILLIAM SCHULZ
The Nov. 25 announcement that a team of U.S. scientists had successfully cloned human embryos touched off heated calls in the Senate to immediately ban such research--a ban encouraged by President George W. Bush. The Senate charge was led by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), who wanted an immediate vote on a bill to ban human reproductive cloning, which was passed in the House last summer.
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Brownback
ROLL CALL PHOTOS |
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Brownback's call, however, was thwarted by Sen. Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who, while opposed to human reproductive cloning, says he nonetheless wants full deliberation of the issue. Daschle and other senators say that cloning research aimed at developing new medical therapies at least deserves a full hearing--preferably in the next session of Congress.
Researchers at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), Worcester, Mass.--the company behind the human cloning effort--insist that the goal of their research was not reproductive cloning. But they did use cloning techniques, such as removing DNA from human egg cells and replacing it with DNA from human somatic cells. Egg cells with the transplanted DNA were grown to a six-cell stage, when cell division stopped [J. Regenerative Med., 2, 25 (2001)].
Jose B. Cibella, vice president of research and lead author of the research report, said that his company wants to learn how to successfully clone human embryo cells in order to harvest stem cells. The stem cells, in turn, might be used to treat a variety of human diseases and medical conditions.
But the potential of the technique to deliver medical breakthroughs has not persuaded Bush to change his tough moral stance. "We should not as a society grow life to destroy it, and that's exactly what's taking place," he said.
At a White House press conference, spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters that "banning it would be the President's view," referring to human cloning research. "The President hopes that as a result of this first crossing of the line and this first step into the morally consequential realm of creating a life to take a life in the name of science, that the Senate will act on the House legislation so that this procedure can be banned."
Scientists note that the ACT work is not really a scientific breakthrough, but it does raise political and ethical issues.
And Ian Wilmut, a researcher at Scotland's Roslin Institute, where he helped perform the research that cloned Dolly the sheep, told Reuters news service the ACT research "is fairly lightweight." He noted that some cell division in unfertilized human egg cells can be achieved without cloning techniques. To harvest stem cells, researchers would have to grow embryos to the blastocyst stage, which is a mass of 100 to 150 cells.
Brownback has not thrown in the towel on his campaign to halt human cloning research immediately. A spokesman for the senator says he is "exploring options" with Senate Republican leaders.
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