Sen. Orrin Hatch has stepped into the contentious debate over cloning, parting ways with other anti-abortion advocates by supporting a bill that would allow research involving the copying of human genes.
In an April 30 press conference, Hatch (R-Utah) joined with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) in announcing a bill that would ban human cloning for reproductive purposes. But unlike a competing bill, which would prohibit all human cloning, this one would allow a process known as “somatic cell nuclear transplantation” or “therapeutic cloning.”
In that process, the nucleus of a cell from a living person is transplanted into an unfertilized human egg, creating an identical genetic copy of the individual. The egg is then stimulated in a laboratory to divide and grow into a zygote, from which cells known as “stem cells” are harvested.
Stem cells have the potential to grow into several different kinds of tissues, which then may be transplanted back into the original DNA donor to replace diseased or damaged tissue.
Scientists say research using stem cells from cloned zygotes has great potential to find effective treatments for many terminal diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, Lou Gehrig’s disease and others.
Scientists already have done research using stem cells harvested from embryos left over from couples undergoing fertility treatments. But cloned embryos provide the added benefit of guaranteeing that the body of the person being treated will not reject the tissue created from the stem cells — because the tissue will be genetically identical to that of the donor.
Believing that life begins at conception, most anti-abortion activists oppose any research on either fertilized or cloned embryos, because the process of harvesting the stem cells destroys the embryos. Some medical ethicists also oppose therapeutic cloning over fear that it could create loopholes that would ultimately lead to widespread reproductive cloning.
Another Senate bill would ban all forms of human cloning, including therapeutic cloning. Co-sponsored by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Sen. Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.), it is similar to legislation passed last year by the House of Representatives.
The debate over the competing bills has emerged as one of the most contentious currently on Capitol Hill. One issue is whether destroying an embryo that was created by cloning is the moral equivalent of taking a human life. Anti-abortion groups say it is, and President Bush has backed them up. In a recent speech, he said, “A law permitting research cloning, while forbidding the birth of a cloned child, would require the destruction of nascent human life.”
But Hatch — one of the Senate’s most stalwart abortion opponents — said he disagrees. “I think it’s worth making a distinction between a living human cell and a fertilized human being,” Hatch said when asked about it at the press conference. He said he does believe human life begins at conception, but cloned embryos are not conceived.
They will not be carried in a mother’s womb, which is the only place they could grow, he said, so they do not constitute human beings.
The Hatch-Specter-Kennedy-Feinstein bill would impose harsh penalties, including 10 years in prison and minimum fines of $1 million, on those convicted of creating human clones for reproductive purposes. It also provides several safeguards — including the requirement that any therapeutic cloning research be approved ahead of time by an independent ethical-review board.
The aim of Hatch and Specter’s version of the legislation has garnered star endorsements, including more than 40 Nobel Prize winners and former President Gerald Ford, who recently wrote President Bush a letter announcing his opposition to the Brownback-Landrieu bill and the House cloning ban. The National Right to Life Committee said the Hatch-Specter bill is nothing more than a “dressed up version of the existing ‘clone and kill’ bills” that would allow cloning and destruction of human embryos.
(ABP)
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