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States take action on cloning, embryonic research

A bioethicist says global consensus is needed to move stem cell technology forward.

By Andis Robeznieks, amednews staff. June 30, 2003.

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The promise of medical treatments from embryonic stem cell research and the distastefulness of human cloning are combining to create a volatile stew of science and politics.

Until recently the debate was confined to national politics, where dueling cloning bills in the U.S. Senate appear to be canceling each other out. However, state legislatures are now getting into the act as well.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 68 fetal and embryonic research bills plus 68 cloning bills were introduced in 29 states this year.

Cloning to produce human beings appears to have almost universal opposition, so the main controversy involves cloning embryos in order to harvest their stem cells for medical research. The two forms of cloning are politically linked, leaving federal la wmakers deadlocked.

Many observers are worried that other nations will surpass the United States in scientific advances and that something just about everyone wants -- a ban on reproductive cloning -- will never get approved.

"You can't really talk about stem cell research without talking about cloning," said NCSL policy analyst Alissa Johnson.

Supporters say cloning embryos yields fresh supplies of pluripotent stem cells which can be used to find treatments for a multitude of injuries and diseases. Although the embryos have to be destroyed in order to get the stem cells, embryonic stem cell research proponents say these embryos should not be considered potential human beings because they were never going to be implanted in a woman's uterus.

Federal legislation at an impasse

Opponents disagree, describing research cloning as creating life only to destroy it.

This disagreement has caused federal legislation to stall -- even on an issue on which both sides agree.

"The bottom line is that we have no [national] cloning legislation," said Eve Herold, representative of the Clarksburg, Md.-based Stem Cell Research Foundation. "So, consequently, reproductive cloning is not illegal -- even though everyone agrees it sh ould be against the law."

William Hurlbut, MD, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and a consulting professor in human biology at Stanford University, said it's good that this issue is being discussed locally but, ultimately, a global solution will be needed.

"It's a global phenomenon -- more than any issue in medicine that I've ever seen," Dr. Hurlbut said. "My taxi cab driver in Morocco gave me his strong opinions when he found out I was there for a conference discussing the ethics of cloning."

Dr. Hurlbut, who said he was speaking for himself and not for Stanford or the president's council, said one way out of the impasse would be for scientists to find a way to create stem cells from an entity that cannot be defined as a human embryo.

"People who don't have moral qualms should be concerned with the moral qualms of others," he said. "Whatever we accept is going to be the platform on which a great deal of the future of biomedical technology will result. It would be too bad if we built a platform on a foundation that was morally troubling to our fellow citizens."

If the impasse is not overcome and embryonic stem cell research is stalled, the Stem Cell Research Foundation predicts a negative impact on the medical treatment of nearly half the people in the United States.

According to the SCRF, stem cell research holds promise to create new treatments to help the 58 million Americans with heart disease, 43 million with arthritis, 10 million with osteoporosis, 8.2 million with cancer, 4 million with Alzheimer's disease, 1 million with juvenile diabetes, and 250,000 with spinal cord injuries.

At first, the fight was drawn along political party lines, but the promise of these medical breakthroughs has lured conservative Republican icons like Nancy Reagan and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R, Utah) onto the side of embryonic stem cell research supporters.

"I think that -- despite the political controversy -- the science moves forward, and the more we learn, the more promising embryonic stem cell research appears to be," said Sean Tipton, vice president of communications for the Coalition for the Advance ment of Medical Research, a group representing more than 80 science and medical groups -- including the AMA. "The science is really driving the political process here."

Patrick Kelly, vice president of state government relations with the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents more than 1,000 biotech companies, academic institutions and state biotechnology centers invo lved in the research and development of health care, agricultural, industrial and environmental biotechnology products, disagreed. He said the politics are often headline driven.

Typically, if there are prominent biotech stories in the news while legislatures are in session, Kelly said, politicians react by introducing biotech-related bills.

Kelly links early state laws regulating the biotech industry to the then-futuristic news of "test-tube babies." These were followed by laws reacting to the cloning of Dolly the sheep. He said many of this year's bills are reactions to claims made by th e Raelian group that they had cloned a human baby.

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