1.This Act may be cited as the
Respect for Life Pluripotent Stem Cell
Act of 2005
.
2.
The Congress
finds as follows:
(1)Stem cells may be
derived from various sources, including adult tissue, umbilical cord blood, and
living human embryos. The use of cells from embryos has drawn great interest in
the scientific community but also raises very serious ethical concerns for many
Americans, because as practiced today it requires the destruction of human
embryos to obtain their cells.
(2)The President's
Council on Bioethics in its May 2005 White Paper: Alternative Sources of
Pluripotent Stem Cells
, describes several potential methods to derive
stem cells like those now derived through the destruction of embryos, but which
would not involve doing harm to embryos. Some methods propose to involve
embryos in ways that do not harm them, while others propose to reprogram adult
cells to produce cells with the capabilities of embryonic stem cells without
producing or involving embryos at all.
(3)Such proposals
should be thoroughly tested in animal models before being applied to humans, to
establish that they do not involve creating or harming human embryos.
(4)Several
scientific reports also suggest that some subclasses of adult stem cells
(derived from postnatal tissues, umbilical cord blood, and placenta) show a
flexibility comparable to that of stem cells now derived through the
destruction of embryos.
(5)American
scientists should be encouraged to pursue all ethical avenues of stem cell
research and to explore morally uncontroversial alternatives to research
requiring the destruction of human embryos.
3.Derivation of
stem cells without harming embryos; research through National Institutes of
Health
Part B of title
IV of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 284) is amended by adding at the
end the following:
409J.Basic and
applied research on derivation and use of pluripotent stem cells without
harming embryos
(a)In
this section, the following definitions apply:
(1)The term human embryo
includes any
organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of
the enactment of the Respect for Life Pluripotent Stem Cell Act of 2005, that
is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from
one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
(2)The term pluripotent stem cell
means a
cell that can in principle be differentiated to produce all or almost all the
cell types of the human body, and therefore has the same functional capacity as
an embryonic stem cell, regardless of whether it has the same origin.
(b)With respect to producing stem cell lines for important
biomedical research, the Director of NIH shall, through the appropriate
national research institutes, provide for the conduct and support of basic and
applied research in isolating, deriving and using pluripotent stem cells
without creating or harming human embryos. Such research may include—
(1)research in
animals to develop and test techniques for deriving cells from embryos without
doing harm to those embryos;
(2)research to
develop and test techniques for producing human pluripotent stem cells without
creating or making use of embryos; and
(3)research to
isolate, develop, and test pluripotent stem cells from postnatal tissues,
umbilical cord blood, and placenta.
(c)Prohibitions
regarding harm to human embryosResearch under subsection (b) may
not include any research that—
(1)involves the use
of human embryos;
(2)involves the use
of stem cells not otherwise eligible for funding by the National Institutes of
Health;
(3)involves the use
of any stem cell to create or to attempt to create a human embryo; or
(4)poses a
significant risk of creating a human embryo by any means.
(d)Authorization
of appropriationsFor the purpose of carrying out this section,
there are authorized to be appropriated $15,000,000 in fiscal year 2006, and
such sums as may be necessary for each of the fiscal years 2007 through 2010.
Such authorization is in addition to other authorizations of appropriations
that are available for such
purpose.
.