[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 28 (Wednesday, March 13, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E336-E337]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      ``NUCLEAR TRANSPLANTATION''

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. RUSH D. HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, March 13, 2002

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, the universal use of the term ``cloning'' to 
describe many procedures can be very misleading. I submit for the 
Record an article from the journal Science by Bert Vogelstein, Bruce 
Alberts, and Kenneth Shine that suggests the adoption of the term 
``nuclear transplantation'' to describe what is now called 
``therapeutic cloning'' to more accurately portray the technique. I 
commend it to my colleagues.

                     Please Don't Call It Cloning!

       Scientists rely on a dialect of specialized terminology to 
     communicate precise descriptions of scientific phenomena to 
     each other. In general, that practice has served the 
     community well--novel terms are created when needed to 
     document new findings, behaviors, structures, or principles. 
     The lexicon of science is constantly evolving. Scientists who 
     are fluent in the language of any specific discipline can 
     speak to one another using shorthand expressions from this 
     dialect and can convey an exact understanding of their 
     intended meanings. However, when the scientific shorthand 
     makes its way to the nonscientific public; there is a 
     potential for such meaning to be lost or misunderstood, and 
     for the terminology to become associated with research or 
     applications for which it is inappropriate.
       In scientific parlance, cloning is a broadly used, 
     shorthand term that refers to producing a copy of some 
     biological entity--a gene, an organism, a cell--an objective 
     that, in many cases, can be achieved by means other than the 
     technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. Bacteria 
     clone themselves by repeated fission. Plants reproduce 
     clonally through asexual means and by vegetative 
     regeneration.
       Much confusion has arisen in the public, in that cloning 
     seems to have become almost synonymous with somatic cell 
     nuclear transfer, a procedure that can be used for many 
     different purposes. Only one of these purposes involves an 
     intention to create a clone of the organism (for example, a 
     human). Legislation passed by the House of Representatives 
     and under consideration in the U.S. Senate to ban the cloning 
     of human beings actually proscribes somatic cell nuclear 
     transfer--that is, any procedure in which a human somatic 
     cell nucleus is transferred into an oocyte whose own nucleus 
     has been removed. As Donald Kennedy remarked in a Science 
     editorial last year, the legislation would interdict a wide 
     range of experimental procedures that in the near future, 
     might become both medically useful and morally acceptable.
       A law that would make it illegal to create embryonic stem 
     cells by using somatic cell nuclear transfer would foreclose 
     at least two important avenues of investigation. First, the 
     technique shows promise to overcome the anticipated problem 
     of immune rejection in stem cell-based therapies to replace a 
     patient's diseased or damaged tissue. Creating stem cells 
     with the patient's own nuclear gernome might theotically 
     eliminate tissue rejection. Second creating stem cell lines 
     by using the somatic cell nuclei of individuals with 
     heritable diseases offers an unprecedented opportunity to 
     study genetic disorders as they unfold during cellular 
     development.
       Both of these goals have nothing to do with producing a 
     human being. They may be caught up in the proposed 
     legislation in part because of misunderstood scientific 
     jargon--namely, the casual use of the term ``therapeutic 
     cloning'' to describe stem cells made for research in 
     regenerative medicine using somatic cell nuclear transfer. 
     What is worse, the already blurred distinction between these 
     two very different avenues of investigation has been 
     compounded by the interchangeable use of human cloning with 
     therapeutic cloning by those who suggest that cloning a human 
     being is a ``therapeutic'' treatment for infertility.
       The term cloning, we believe, is properly associated with 
     the ultimate outcome or objective of the research, not the 
     mechanism or techniques used to achieve that objective. The 
     goal of creating a nearly identical genetic copy of a human 
     being is consistent with the term human reproductive cloning, 
     but the goal of creating stem cells for rengenative medicine 
     is not consistent with the term therapeutic cloning. The 
     objective of the latter is not to create a copy of the 
     potential tissue recipient, but rather to make tissue that is 
     genetically compatible with that of the recipient. Although 
     it may have been conceived as a simple term to help lay 
     people distinguish two different applications of somatic cell 
     nuclear transfer, ``therapeutic cloning'' is conceptually 
     inaccurate and misleading, and should be abandoned.
       It is in the interest of the scientific community to 
     clearly articulate the differences between stem cell research 
     and human cloning. Most scientists agree that cloning a human 
     being, aside from the moral or ethical issues, is unsafe 
     under present conditions. A recently released National 
     Academy of Sciences report details the considerable problems 
     observed in the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer for 
     animal reproduction and concludes that cloning of human 
     beings

[[Page E337]]

     should be prohibited. But the report also notes the 
     substantial medical and scientific potential of stem cell 
     lines created by using this technique.
       More careful use of terminology would help the public and 
     lawmakers sort out the substantial differences between 
     nuclear transplantation and human reproductive cloning. One 
     place to start is to find a more appropriate term for the use 
     of somatic cell nuclear transfer to create stem cells. We 
     propose the term ``nuclear transplantation,'' which captures 
     the concept of the cell nucleus and its genetic material 
     being moved from one cell to another, as well as the nuance 
     of ``transplantation,'' an objective of regenerative 
     medicine.
       Legislators attempting to define good public policy 
     regarding human cloning need the scientific community to be 
     clear about the science, and to be clear when they speak to 
     the public about it. Adopting the term nuclear 
     transplantation in relation to stem cell research would be 
     more precise, and it would help to untangle these two very 
     different paths of investigation.

     

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