[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 108 (Thursday, August 1, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7862-S7864]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       IN MEMORY OF TIMOTHY WHITE

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wanted to take a moment to note the 
passing of Timothy White, who was the editor-in-chief of Billboard 
magazine until he died unexpectedly a few weeks ago, leaving a wife and 
two young sons. He has been honored by many throughout the music 
industry, particularly for his trumpeting of new, not yet famous 
artists, working to give them space in a medium generally reserved for 
the already successful.
  We worked with Tim on artists' rights issues, such as work-for-hire, 
during my tenure as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. His efforts on 
behalf of all artists will be remembered.
  Looking to boost artists whom he felt deserved more attention, he 
wrote, ``At its high end, rock `n' roll can periodically fill in the 
hollows of this faithless era--especially when the music espouses 
values that carry the ring of emotional candor.'' I share the hope that 
true artists who offer a lift to their listeners from the weight of the 
world will be found by those seeking the joy and inspiration music can 
offer, and note with sadness the passing of a friend of that cause, as 
I also join my friends in the music industry in extending our 
condolences and best wishes at this difficult time to Tim's wife and 
sons. I trust they will find Tim's legacy a source of pride and solace 
in the coming months and years.
  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I rise to say a few words 
about human cloning as the Senate will soon be recessing for the month 
of August. Not only has the Senate failed to ban human cloning 
altogether, we have not had a meaningful debate on this critical issue.
  Let me begin my remarks with an insightful and profound line in the 
movie ``Jurassic Park,'' delivered by a mathematician played by Jeff 
Goldblum. AS the creator of the park is praising his scientific team 
for taking science into uncharted waters, Goldblum's character 
interrupts him. ``Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or 
not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.'' The Senate 
needs to stop and think if it should.
  In my remarks today, I will outline five reasons why the Senate 
should vote for the Brownback-Landrieu bill which bans all human 
cloning. Let me start by saying that there has been a lot of talk about 
``the two different kinds of cloning''--that is, reproductive and 
therapeutic. But let me be clear: All human cloning is reproductive, in 
the sense that it creates--reproduces--a new developing human intended 
to be genetically identical to the cloned subject. The difference is 
that one is intended to be carried to term and the other is intended to 
be deliberately killed for its cells.
  Therapeutic cloning is when scientists clone an embryo solely to 
utilize its stem cells either to create large ``control groups'' or to 
attempt mass production of genetically matched stem sells for treatment 
of diseases. Many of my colleagues believe that only reproductive 
cloning is immoral, but they are in favor of therapeutic cloning. They 
say that therapeutic cloning is beneficial because it has the potential 
to help people with diseases. They don't want a cloned embryo to be 
implanted in a woman's womb and begin to grow, but they support 
creating the embryo and then plucking its stem cells until it dies.
  The first reason my colleagues should vote to ban all human cloning 
is that the human embryo is a human life with a soul, whether it is 
cloned or is conceived naturally, and should be destroyed for any 
reason. There is not one person in the Senate or on the face of the 
Earth who did not begin their life as a human embryo.
  If we allow the creation of embryos solely for their destruction, we 
will effectively be discriminating against an entire class of human 
beings by saying to them: I will destroy your life for the sake of 
someone else's or my own. If we accept the notion that some lives have 
more value than others, if we allow scientists or doctors or 
politicians to play God and determine which lives have value and which 
do not, then we have demolished the very foundation upon which we have 
built our freedom. Human embryos are not machines to be used for spare 
parts, all in the name of ``medical progress.'' We cannot view human 
life as an exploitable natural resource, ripe for the harvest.
  Some base their passion for so-called therapeutic cloning upon the 
false premise that what is created in the lab is not a human embryo. 
The facts dispute these unsupported claims. Dr. John Gearhart of Johns 
Hopkins University, one of the discoverers of human embryonic stem 
cells, told the President's Council on Bioethics on April 25, 2002, 
that he thinks the product of cloning is and should be called an 
``embryo.'' He said: ``I know that you are grappling with this question 
of whether a cloned embryo created in the lab is the same thing as an 
embryo produced by egg and sperm, and whether we should call it an 
`embryo', but anything that you construct at this point in time that 
has the properties of those structures to me is an embryo, and we 
should not be changing vocabulary at this point in time.''
  Even the American Medical Association believes that the clone is 
fully human. The Senate should also listen to the House of 
Representatives and the American public. The House passed a strong 
prohibition on human cloning last summer, and poll after poll shows 
that the vast majority of American citizens are opposed to all human 
cloning.
  The second reason to ban all human cloning is that there are better 
and more ethical ways to discover cures for diseases that do not 
involve the destruction of a human embryo, especially in light of the 
fact that cloning may not even work!
  Almost weekly we read of amazing breakthroughs in the scientific and 
medical communities using adult stem cells and other noncontroversial 
tissues and cells to treat human conditions. Adult stem cells are used 
with success in more than 45 human clinical trials, while embryonic 
stem cells and stem cells from human clones have not helped a single 
person. Here are just a few examples of the successes of adult stem 
cells:
  Last July, the Harvard University Gazette reported that mice with 
Type 1 diabetes were completely cured of their disease using adult stem 
cells. Additionally, University of Florida scientists reported recently 
that adult rat liver stem cells can evolve into insulin- producing 
pancreatic cells, a finding that has implications for the future of 
diabetes research.

  On June 15 of last year, the Globe and Mail reported that Israeli 
doctors injected a paraplegic with her own white blood cells, and she 
regained the ability to move her toes and control her bladder.
  In December of last year, Tissue Engineering, a medical journal, 
reported that researchers believe they will be able to use stem cells 
found in fat to rebuild bone. If this research works, people with 
osteoporosis and other degenerative bone conditions could benefit 
significantly.
  A researcher at the University of Minnesota has discovered what is 
being called the ultimate stem cell. The stem cells found in adult bone 
marrow have passed every test by proving that they can form every 
single tissue in the body, can be grown in culture indefinitely with no 
signs of aging, can be isolated from humans, and do not form cancerous 
masses when injected into adults.
  Scientists from Celmed BioSciences reported that adult neural stem 
cells taken from a patient's own central nervous system have been 
successfully used to treat Parkinson's disease. Their research suggests 
this method of using adult stem cells may possibly be useful in 
treating a variety of other neurological conditions.
  Scientists reported success last week in converting skin cells into 
immune cells. This development has great promise for treating diseases 
such as diabetes, immune deficiencies, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and 
spinal cord injuries. When using cells from the patient's own body, the 
risk of rejection is overcome.

[[Page S7863]]

  Researchers found that intravenous injections of cells from human 
umbilical cord blood improved the neurological and motor function of 
rats recovering from severe traumatic brain injury. The study appears 
in the June 6 issue of the journal Cell Transplantation, a special 
issue that focuses on emerging approaches in neural transplantation and 
brain repair.
  In fact, these ethical approaches to stem cell research are also 
safer for patients than embryonic stem cell research because embryonic 
stem cells may cause tumors in patients, and the body may reject 
embryonic tissues in the same way the immune system rejects 
transplanted organs. As President Bush has stated: ``the benefits of 
research cloning are highly speculative. Advocates of research cloning 
argue that stem cells obtained from cloned embryos would be injected 
into a genetically identical individual without risk of tissue 
rejection. But there is evidence, based on animal studies, that cells 
derived from cloned embryos may indeed be rejected.'' Embryonic stem 
cells have never been used successfully in a human trial. The haven't 
even been used to completely cure disease in a rat or a mouse.
  With the success of adult stem cells, you do not need to clone human 
beings. Let's invest in medical research that the entire Senate can 
support. There is also increasing evidence to indicate that human 
cloning may not even work! You may disagree with my moral or ethical 
arguments, and you may not care how successful adult stem cell 
therapies have been, but I hope you will at least pay attention to this 
important point. Let me repeat it: There is convincing evidence that 
human cloning may not even work.
  The April 5, 2001, issue of Nature reports that cloning human embryos 
to harvest their stem cells is being abandoned by many researchers as 
inefficient, costly, and unnecessary. The article says that ``many 
researchers have come to doubt whether therapeutic cloning will ever be 
efficient enough to be commercially viable.'' Noting the short supply 
of human eggs and the expense and inefficiency of cloning, the article 
concludes that the prospects for therapeutic cloning have ``dimmed'' 
and those who still favor it are taking a ``minority view.''
  Dr. Stuart Newman of NY Medical College noted in his March 5 Senate 
testimony that genetically matched cells from cloning may well be 
useless in treating conditions with a genetic basis such as juvenile 
diabetes--because these cells will have the same genetic defect that 
caused the problem in the first place.
  Due to these factors, as well as advances in genetically tailoring 
cells without using cloning, many experts do not now expect therapeutic 
cloning to have a large clinical impact. In fact, this whole approach 
is said to be ``falling from favor'' among both British and American 
researchers.
  Last December, Michael West of Advanced Cell Technology predicted 
that within 6 months, his company would be ready to create `magic'' 
cells that would save 3,000 lives per day because he would be able to 
clone a human embryo. However, it was later revealed that West was 
unable to garner stem cells from his cloned embryos. Scientists quickly 
pronounced West's cloning experiment a failure. Dr. Donald Kennedy 
summarized the study this way: ``This scientific effort did not succeed 
by any measure.''
  Thomas Okarma, the chief executive of Geron Corp., a cell therapy 
company, has no interest in using cloned embryos to produce customized 
treatments for disease. According to the L.A. Times, he said the odds 
favoring success ``are vanishing small,'' and the costs are daunting. 
He also said that it would take ``thousands of [human] eggs on an 
assembly line'' to produce a custom therapy for a single person. ``The 
process is a nonstarter, commercially,'' he said.
  Let's review the headlines of what the experts say about cloning: 
``Did not succeed'', ``Falling from favor'', ``may well be useless'', 
``prospects have dimmed'', ``vanishing small'', ``did not succeed'', 
and ``nonstarter''. If I were a cloning advocate, I wouldn't want this 
to be made public.
  Writer Wesley J. Smith says human cloning is indeed immoral. But that 
isn't the reason it will eventually be rejected. He says ``there is 
increasing evidence that therapies based on cloned embro cells would be 
so difficult and expensive to develop and so utterly impractical to 
bring to the bedside, that the pie-in-the-sky promises which fuel the 
pro-cloning side of the debate are unlikely to materialize. Not only is 
human cloning immoral but it may have negative utility--in other words, 
attempting to develop human cloning technologies for therapeutic use 
may drain resources and personnel from more useful and practical 
therapies.''
  I want to briefly mention another form of hype that ties into the 
notion of human cloning and its ``boundless potential.'' Let's talk 
about the much ballyhooed fetal tissue transplantation experiments. It 
was originally thought of as the ``ultimate cure of the future'' and 
that interfering with these experiments was to interfere with saving 
countless lives. Now, after 13 years of private and publicly funded 
trials, some of the worse case scenarios have come to pass, while 
nothing of scientific value has been accomplished.
  Today there is a thriving market in the sale of baby body parts, 
which I brought to light a couple of years ago. Also, the methods and 
timing of abortions are being changed to garner better tissue for 
research, and the most comprehensive study on the use of fetal tissue 
to treat Parkinson's showed no overall health benefit. Research 
described side effects of the treatment as ``absolutely devastating.'' 
Patients implanted with fetal tissue chewed constantly, writhed and 
twisted, and one patient had to be put on a feeding tube because his 
spasms were too severe. Dr. Paul Greene says it best: ``no more fetal 
transplants.'' Some panacea.
  Gene therapy is another example of hype that not only as yielded no 
results, but is has also been responsible for the deaths of many people 
and over 1,000 serious adverse effects. A patient's group advocate 
noted: ``It's hardly gotten anywhere. I have been very disappointed.''
  The only thing cloning will do is ``clone'' all the similar hype that 
has gone before it.
  Additionally, trials in animal cloning indicate that 95 to 99 percent 
of the embryos produced by cloning will die; of those that survive 
until late in pregnancy, most will be stillborn or die shortly after 
birth. The rest may survive with unpredictable but devastating health 
problems. In fact, a review of all the world's cloned animals suggests 
every one of them is genetically and physically defective.
  Four years ago, it took about 270 attempts to clone Dolly, the sheep. 
Is the Senate willing to go on record to sacrifice 270 human lives in 
order to successfully produce 1 cloned human being?
  The third point I would like to drive home to you is the slippery 
slope argument. It is interesting to see how this debate has evolved, 
especially when one considers last year's debate, which was about 
whether to condone the dissection of embryos that would be destroyed 
anyway. This year's debate is about whether to destroy embryos that 
wouldn't have been created otherwise. One of my colleagues, on the 
subject of killing embryos, had this to say: ``Private companies are 
creating embryos specifically for stem cells, and I think that's a very 
bad idea.'' However, he is now sponsoring a bill that would allow what 
he once opposed: the creation of embryos specifically for stem cell 
research.

  If the debate alone has evolved and is subjective and prone to change 
and charging down a slippery slope, how much more so the issue of 
medical experimentation with human beings? Many clonings supporters 
scoff at the slippery slope argument, but let's look at what is 
happening with animal experimentation. Already scientists have taken 
cloned cow embryos past the blastocyst stage, allowed them to develop 
into fetuses, and reimplanted their tissue back into the donor animal.
  If we allow for therapeutic cloning--again, this is cloning where you 
grow a cloned embryo simply to utilize its cells for medical research--
why not allow cloned embryos to further develop until their organs can 
be harvested for transplantation? If a cloned baby could save or 
improve the lives of many people, why not sacrifice its organs for the 
sake of many other people's quality of life? The only distinction, if 
morality and ethics are not a

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consideration, is a few months of time to wait for the embryos to 
develop.
  It is no secret that our society wants to live forever. What would 
stop a person with financial means from cloning little versions of 
themselves so that when they get old, they could pluck out a younger 
version of a failing organ from their clone?
  If we are willing to use cloned human embryos to save human lives, 
why shouldn't we consider sacrificing other ``less important'' people 
for our own gain? For example, how about taking healthy organs from 
persons who are in a permanent vegetative state? What about plucking 
parts from the terminally ill, mentally retarded, or ``old'' people 
past the age of 60. I know this may sound far-fetched to my colleagues, 
but let us ask ourselves what the Senators standing in this Chamber a 
mere 25 years ago would have thought of a debate such as the one we are 
having here today on human cloning. They would have thought predictions 
of deliberation on such matters were far-fetched as well.
  Once we start down the slippery slope of creating life for 
utilitarian purposes, there is no definitive line that separates what 
we ought and ought not to do. There are no ethical boundaries that will 
keep scientists in check once we accept the premise that the goal of 
curing diseases outweighs the ethical or moral value of human life. But 
once we accept the ``anything goes'' philosophy, then ``everything 
goes.'' When we begin to decide who should live and who should not, we 
effectively remove God from every area of our lives and our Nation. 
After the events of September 11, it is clear that this Nation needs 
God more than ever.

  This is to say nothing of the eventual creation of a brave new world. 
Will genes be modified to give people higher IQs or eliminate the 
tendency to be overweight? What if we inadvertently introduce 
disastrous abnormalities into the human race? Will we introduce 
abnormalities that lead to new diseases that afflict our fellow man? 
Cloning is just not worth it.
  The fourth point to consider is that human cloning represents the 
commodification and commercialization of human life. Some biotech firms 
hope to patent specific cloned human embryos for sale for many types of 
experimentation--just as designer strains of cats, mice, and other 
animals are already patented and sold as ``medical models.'' These 
firms are amoral and will pursue whichever path provides the greatest 
potential for financial gain. They will not regulate themselves. This 
Congress bears the responsibility of regulating these companies. It is 
our duty to the American public to hold amoral corporations to a higher 
ethical standard. These biotech firms are forgetting that human life is 
not a good to be traded in the marketplace nor a means by which they 
can profit financially.
  The fifth and final reason we should not allow any form of human 
cloning is that it will be impossible to keep women from implanting 
cloned embryos into their wombs.
  A ban on reproductive cloning will not work because cloning would 
take place within the privacy of a doctor-patient relationship and 
because the transfer of embryos to begin a pregnancy is a simple 
procedure. Would the woman be forced to abort the ``illegal product''? 
This has been called the ``clone and kill'' approach because you would 
force the woman to kill her unborn child.
  Even the Department of Justice agrees that it is nearly impossible to 
enforce a bill that allows for the creation of human embryos for 
research. They said: ``Enforcing a modified cloning ban would be 
problematic and pose certain law enforcement challenges that would be 
lessened with an outright ban on human cloning.'' And ``anything short 
of an outright ban would present other difficulties to law 
enforcement.''
  If you think we will never see an implanted clone, think again. 
Italian fertility specialist Severino Antinori is now explicitly 
claiming that three women are pregnant with clones. One of the 
pregnancies is in its 10th week.
  The bottom line is that if we only vote to ban reproductive cloning 
but allow for therapeutic cloning, at some point we will start hearing 
stories of women who are pregnant with clones of their dead children, 
clones of their husband, and clones of themselves. We will have opened 
up the Pandora's box, and we will bear the responsibility for all that 
may follow.
  Unless humans are seen as created in God's image and endowed by Him 
with the right to live, there will be no stopping the scientists and 
doctors from doing whatever they want to do.
  We stand here today in an important moment in time. Pro-cloning 
advocates have promoted the lofty claims of miraculous breakthroughs. 
They play on the emotions of the ill and those who care about them, 
which is all of us. But just below the surface there is a dark, 
frightening premise. They believe that science has the right to play 
God, to create a lower form of human life to be harvested for medical 
research. This is ethically and morally wrong. Even science does not 
back all the hype from the pro-cloning side. There is no proof that 
sacrificing our ethics and morality to allow human cloning will even 
help these patients. There are better, ethical solutions.
  Today, my colleagues, we must choose. This one decision will protect 
human life as we know it, or it will open the door to an ethical, 
medical, and moral wasteland, We can help those suffering with diseases 
without sacrificing our Nation's core principles. To oppose any form of 
human cloning is to preserve the sanctity of human life while providing 
real solutions based on real science. Let us choose what is right. We 
must ban all human cloning, no matter how it is cloaked. Future 
generations will judge us based upon what we do today. We must think of 
the future we want for our children--an ethical world that use sound, 
moral science to heal, and that respects the dignity of every human 
life.
  Our country stands at a crossroads. I hope the United States will not 
follow the road taken by God's chosen people many years ago as recorded 
in the Holy Bible: ``In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as 
he saw fit.'' (Judges 21:25)
  I hope and pray that the Senate will eventually ban all forms of 
human cloning.

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