Posted on 07/10/2003 11:55:08 AM PDT by MHGinTN
1-29-03 -- Testimony of Rep. Dave Weldon, M.D. (R-FL)
Senate Commerce Science & Transportation Committee
Science, Technology, & Space Subcommittee
Topic: Human Cloning
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Thank you for the opportunity to testify. It is critically important that the Senate enact a complete ban on human cloning. There is a huge bipartisan majority of Americans that want to see the procedure of human cloning banned, both for reproductive or experimental research purposes. The failure to act is not only confusing and disappointing to the American people, but it also sends out a very wrong message to the world.
The United States remains not only the world’s leader in the arenas of biomedical technology development and research, but as well in the areas of the ethics involving the applications of these technologies. Many countries that have banned all human cloning remain amazed that the United States has not enacted a similar ban, and that today in America it remains legal to perform human cloning.
For this reason, I would like to confine my comments to the principle issue that is responsible for this failure to act. All human cloning begins with the production of a cloned embryo. Reproductive cloning involves implanting a cloned embryo into a women’s uterus; while cloning research, therapeutic cloning, somatic cell nuclear transfer, nuclear transfer, or whatever you choose to call it, involves taking that same embryo and destroying it to take its cells rather than implanting it.
The question before us is whether we should ban human cloning at its beginning, or whether we should allow the creation of cloned human embryos for experimental research and the inevitable implantation.
Many advocates for research cloning have advanced the notion that we need to allow it because of the so-called potential of therapeutic cloning. This potential has been based on speculation, exaggeration and with no scientific facts. There are not even animal models to back up the claimed promises.
Cloning advocates say they need cloning to cure diseases. We were all promised just last year that embryonic stem cell research will cure all our ills. Now a few months later those same people are telling us that we need to accept human cloning experiments to address tissue rejection issues. I would like to remind you that transplant surgeon, and now Senate Majority Leader Frist, made it clear on November 27, 2001, in a Senate floor speech, that cloning does not resolve the tissue rejection issues.
In fact, the real successes and advances are being made in the area of adult stem cells. Adult stem cells can be harvested from many areas of your body such as the marrow, fat tissue, even your nose. There are no immune rejection issues with their use, no moral or ethical objections, and they have been used successfully in clinical practice for over twenty years to treat a host of serious conditions. Adult stem cells have been used successfully in over forty-five human clinical trials, treated thousands with bone marrow transplants, and cured a 59 year old man of Parkinson’s disease.
Furthermore, today’s medical literature abounds with publications demonstrating successful new human clinical applications of adult stem cells. Mr. Chairman, I still see patients and I still read the medical journals. For the record I submit a list of over 80 recent articles I was able to obtain from the medical literature demonstrating the successful use of adult stem cells.
Researchers have found it very difficult to move embryo stem cells beyond the petri dish. Their robust tendency to duplicate and differentiate has shown them to be unstable in animal trials with a tendency to form cancer like tumors. Today, not only is there no example of embryo stem cells being used successfully to treat disease in humans, there is not even a good animal model where this can be done. What Senator Hatch and others are proposing we do is to go down this same path with cloned human embryos. Mr. Chairman, these are not minor issues. These are major issues, and they are obstacles we do not face with adult stem cells.
Both my bill and your bill, Mr. Chairman, allow unfettered, ongoing research in the field of animal research in the area of cloning. Cloning of animals is permissible under our legislation Cloning of tissues is permissible. Cloning of DNA is permissible. Mr. Chairman we do not allow drug companies to go out there and start experimenting on human subjects with their drugs until they have first proven successes in animal models. Why some would want to skip this process with human cloning is beyond me. I say to the researchers, go out and conduct your animal experiments and then come back to us, but do not skip that process and start experimenting with humans. Too much is at stake.
If we pass anything short of the bill that Rep. Bart Stupak and I have introduced in the House, and the bill that you and Senator Mary Landrieu are introducing in the Senate, we will be forced to confront some very serious issues.
Absent our bill, we will usher in an era where women will be exploited by experimental research cloning corporations for their eggs. Millions of women’s eggs will be purchased for use in cloning experiments. This commodification of women is one of the reasons that leading feminists like Judy Norsigian have come out against research cloning. We have already seen the disturbing ads in college newspapers offering to pay women for their eggs for research. I find it hard to believe that some would embrace exposing these women to serious medical procedures in order to harvest their eggs for experiments.
Second, the failure to approve our bill will allow there to be hundreds of labs all over the country creating cloned human embryos which will usher in reproductive cloning. It will be impossible to police reproductive cloning. The U.S. Department of Justice said so in testimony they presented in a House Committee last year. (Mr. Chairman I would like to submit their testimony for the record.) Once cloned embryos are available in the laboratory, the implantation of a cloned human embryo into the womb of a surrogate mother would occur in the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. Once implanted, what would the proponents of research cloning suggest we do? How could they possibly enforce their bill?
On May 15, 2002 Dr. Bryan Cowan, representing the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, testified before the House that they opposed reproductive cloning “at this time.” I questioned him asking whether his professional organization “may come out ultimately in support of Dr. Zavos’ position that we should allow reproductive cloning.” He responded, and I quote: “Yes, sir. It is a difficult position.” Their position is that when the safety issues are resolved they want to engage in reproductive cloning. So, research cloning will pave the way for reproductive cloning. Therefore, the only way to effectively stop this from occurring is to ban cloning from the start.
Finally, let me say that, if we allow research cloning to be legal in the U.S., we are opening the door to a whole host of additional moral and ethical dilemmas. The artificial womb is currently under development and it is possible to place the cloned embryos in an artificial womb environment and allow them to develop beyond the embryonic stage well into the fetal stage of development.
Mr. Chairman, artificial wombs will be available in the near future. I’ll suggest to you that you’ll see these same people knocking on your door next year, saying please just let us grow these embryos for a few more weeks in the artificial womb so we can get the differentiated cells. The question remains, how far will they go, to what age would they like to grow these smallest of humans in order to exploit them.
Researchers in the US have already cultured uterine cells in their labs (endometrium tissue, the inner lining of the uterus) and implanted human embryos in that cultured tissue, proving that the lab conceived embryo can and will implant in extra-corporeal tissues. In Japan and South America, artificial placentas have sustained goat fetuses for as much as seventeen weeks (they use the term 'artificial womb' to describe their artificial chamber, but it is essentially a blend of womb and placenta, with the goat fetus removed from the placental sac and it's umbilicus attached to tubing for nourishment and gas exchange while floating in a plastic chamber of amniotic fluid). With such advances already rolling, the time to ban all human cloning is NOW, not a year or three down the slippery sloped funnel road.
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