Legislators prepare bill to fund human cloning
According to CQ Today last night:
As the Obama administration prepares to greatly expand the government’s investments in embryonic stem cell research, the next big biomedical research debate in Congress is shaping up: whether to allow government funding of experiments using cloned human embryos.
Two House members who were the chief backers of legislation to expand embryonic stem cell research are working on a new bill that would codify President Obama’s recent executive order allowing greater federal funding for the research. Their legislation will also contain language allowing the National Institutes of Health to invest in other kinds of research into human cell biology, perhaps including what is known as “therapeutic cloning.”
The 2 pro-death legislators, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Michael Castle, R-DE) previously introduced clone-and-kill legislation (HR 2560, 109th) that banned implanting clones in uteruses but allowed them to be grown for research until 14 days old.
I’ve previously explained the success of embryonic stem cell research hinges on human cloning. Human embryos as distinct human beings, will be difficult to match donor to recipient. CQ Today concurs:
Experts in the field believe that therapeutic cloning could one day lead to advances such as tissue transplants that carry no threat of rejection by a patient’s immune system.
According to a source on the Hill, the new legislation will likely include the same provisions “and even encourage the creation of cloned embryos” for experimentation and death.
Meanwhile, Reps. Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Zach Wamp (R-TN) have reintroduced a comprehensive ban on all forms of human cloning (HR 1050). Similar versions of this bill have passed the House in the 107th and 108th Congresses but stalled in the Senate.
See the current list of 57 sponsors and co-sponsors on page 2.
[Graphic courtesy of LifeNews.com]
Rep Akin, W. Todd [R-MO-2] – 3/24/2009
Rep Alexander, Rodney [R-LA-5] – 3/11/2009
Rep Bachmann, Michele [R-MN-6] – 3/5/2009
Rep Bishop, Rob [R-UT-1] – 3/5/2009
Rep Boehner, John A. [R-OH-8] – 4/2/2009
Rep Boozman, John [R-AR-3] – 3/11/2009
Rep Broun, Paul C. [R-GA-10] – 3/24/2009
Rep Brown, Henry E., Jr. [R-SC-1] – 3/5/2009
Rep Burton, Dan [R-IN-5] – 3/5/2009
Rep Cao, Anh “Joseph” [R-LA-2] – 3/5/2009
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [R-UT-3] – 3/11/2009
Rep Childers, Travis [D-MS-1] – 3/5/2009
Rep Coffman, Mike [R-CO-6] – 3/11/2009
Rep Conaway, K. Michael [R-TX-11] – 3/5/2009
Rep Davis, Geoff [R-KY-4] – 3/5/2009
Rep Fallin, Mary [R-OK-5] – 3/5/2009
Rep Fleming, John [R-LA-4] – 3/24/2009
Rep Fortenberry, Jeff [R-NE-1] – 3/16/2009
Rep Foxx, Virginia [R-NC-5] – 3/5/2009
Rep Franks, Trent [R-AZ-2] – 3/5/2009
Rep Gingrey, Phil [R-GA-11] – 3/24/2009
Rep Gohmert, Louie [R-TX-1] – 3/5/2009
Rep Harper, Gregg [R-MS-3] – 3/12/2009
Rep Hensarling, Jeb [R-TX-5] – 3/5/2009
Rep Hunter, Duncan D. [R-CA-52] – 3/5/2009
Rep Inglis, Bob [R-SC-4] – 3/5/2009
Rep Issa, Darrell E. [R-CA-49] – 3/24/2009
Rep Jenkins, Lynn [R-KS-2] – 3/31/2009
Rep Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R-NC-3] – 3/11/2009
Rep Jordan, Jim [R-OH-4] – 3/5/2009
Rep King, Steve [R-IA-5] – 3/24/2009
Rep Kingston, Jack [R-GA-1] – 3/5/2009
Rep Kline, John [R-MN-2] – 3/5/2009
Rep Lamborn, Doug [R-CO-5] – 3/5/2009
Rep Latta, Robert E. [R-OH-5] – 3/16/2009
Rep Linder, John [R-GA-7] – 3/12/2009
Rep Luetkemeyer, Blaine [R-MO-9] – 3/24/2009
Rep Manzullo, Donald A. [R-IL-16] – 3/5/2009
Rep McHenry, Patrick T. [R-NC-10] – 3/5/2009
Rep Moran, Jerry [R-KS-1] – 3/12/2009
Rep Murphy, Tim [R-PA-18] – 3/18/2009
Rep Neugebauer, Randy [R-TX-19] – 3/5/2009
Rep Olson, Pete [R-TX-22] – 3/5/2009
Rep Pence, Mike [R-IN-6] – 3/5/2009
Rep Pitts, Joseph R. [R-PA-16] – 3/5/2009
Rep Posey, Bill [R-FL-15] – 3/5/2009
Rep Radanovich, George [R-CA-19] – 3/23/2009
Rep Rogers, Harold [R-KY-5] – 3/12/2009
Rep Rogers, Mike D. [R-AL-3] – 3/5/2009
Rep Shadegg, John B. [R-AZ-3] – 3/5/2009
Rep Shimkus, John [R-IL-19] – 3/24/2009
Rep Smith, Christopher H. [R-NJ-4] – 3/5/2009
Rep Smith, Lamar [R-TX-21] – 3/24/2009
Rep Souder, Mark E. [R-IN-3] – 3/16/2009*
Rep. Stupak, Bart (D-MI-1]
Rep Tiahrt, Todd [R-KS-4] – 3/23/2009
Rep Wamp, Zach [R-TN-3] – 2/12/2009*
*Sponsors
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
There is no difference between therapeutic cloning and cloning to bring about a child. The only difference is what you do with the clones. In the latter case you allow the clone to grown, offering her the safe harbor of a womb and bringing her to maturity. In therapeutic cloning, you clone a human being for the sole purpose of killing her, to harvest her for her parts. There’s about a quarter of a step away from fetal farming once we allow therapeutic cloning. And why not? It could potentially be difficult to grow a kidney from an ESC so why not implant the clone, allow the clone (and hence the kidney) to grow on its own, and then after 7 months or so abort the clone and harvest the kidney- alleviate the middle man.
This is what follows from regarding human life not as an ends in itself, but a means to some other end.
Chilling…very chilling…reminds me of the human/embryo “fields” in the Matrix…
Can there be any doubt, that with few exceptions the Democratic party is the party of death.
I am glad my Rep is sponsoring the Cloning Ban Bill.
We are slowing becoming Nazi Germany….
I thought Obama was against cloning. He must have changed his moral direction..I mean, mind. Surprise, surprise.
Bobby, what you describe is beyond words. These politicians who are voting for this are mindless clones.
The “cloning threat” is yet another right wing lie, similar to their lie about “Obama stopping adult stem cell research”. Far right wing extremists are always making up lies to try to mislead, because they cannot discuss issues rationally.
SCNT involves using an unfertilized egg and ones own DNA. What is wrong with that? No fertilization – no “conception” either. There is no “her”, person or “body” as we are talking about cells here that are going to be reproduced, NOT people.
SCNT is just a scientific term for CLONING.
And where do they get the Egg for the SCNT? From poor women who need $ that are drawn to ads that say “Sell your Eggs for $$$!”
” The “cloning threat” is yet another right wing lie, similar to their lie about “Obama stopping adult stem cell research”.”
You are completely off base here. Please tell me how ESCR is supposed to help people. Do you know the idea behind ESCR? Do you know what the goal is and what they are trying to do? I don’t think you do because if you did, you wouldn’t say something as uniformed as that.
So explain to me what the idea behind ESCR is and how in theory it is supposed to help people.
“SCNT involves using an unfertilized egg and ones own DNA. What is wrong with that? No fertilization – no “conception” either. There is no “her”, person or “body” as we are talking about cells here that are going to be reproduced, NOT people.”
This is incorrect, Rayilyn. SCNT takes an enucleated oocyte and “fuses” it with a human skin cell to create a clone (minus the mitochondrial DNA) of the doner of the skin cell. At that point the “egg” is fertilized and you have a clone who has embryonic cells which match that of the doner of the skin cell, a human being who is a 98% identical genetic match.
What is your source for your claim that the unnucleated egg is “fertilized” by a somatic skin cell? I thought fertilization took a sperm.
The blastocyst produced by this process has to successfully implant in a human uterus to ever become a human being. Therapeutic cloning involves reproducing cells, not people.
Over 500 scientific institutions, universities and nobel laureates want to do embryonic stem cell research to help people like me with Parkinson’s because these cells are pluripotent – they can become any kind of cell. Such research helped the recent iPS advances. Disease processes can be studied at the cellular level to produce better drugs and treatments. Although cell replacement is the best known proposed use for embryonic cells, I don’t personally think cell replacement is going to work unless the disease etiology is understood. I think ESCs would work for injuries. But ESCR would help scientists learn causes of diseases. Reference the Dennis Turner case where his PD returned.
Fertilization does not take place in the normal sense, but if the cell would become a human baby given time and nutrition, it is a human blastocyst. You, I, and Obama were once human blastocysts as well–it is a stage of development, like adolescent, toddler, or fetus.
Make no mistake–mark this–
This bill creates a class of human beings that are not allowed to live. It allows their creation, but mandates their deaths.
If it’s “my body, my choice,” and an embryo were created using my skin cells and my eggs, why shouldn’t I be allowed the choice to have that embryo implanted and carry her to term?
(I am not in favor of reproductive cloning–but I like it a whole lot more than cloning and killing).
Hi Anonymous.
“What is your source for your claim that the unnucleated egg is “fertilized” by a somatic skin cell? I thought fertilization took a sperm.”
There is more than one way to fertilize an egg. For simplicity, I’ll cite the wiki article, but this can be found anywhere. There is absolutely no debate over how SCNT works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_cell_nuclear_transfer
Here is the pertinent quote.
“In SCNT the nucleus, which contains the organism’s DNA, of a somatic cell (a body cell other than a sperm or egg cell) is removed and the rest of the cell discarded. At the same time, the nucleus of an egg cell is removed. The nucleus of the somatic cell is then inserted into the enucleated egg cell. After being inserted into the egg, the somatic cell nucleus is reprogrammed by the host cell. The egg, now containing the nucleus of a somatic cell, is stimulated with a shock and will begin to divide. After many mitotic divisions in culture, this single cell forms a blastocyst (an early stage embryo with about 100 cells) with almost identical DNA to the original organism.”
Also on the wiki article, click on the picture to the right. You will see that the process of “thereputic” cloning and “reproductive cloning are EXACTLY the same. The only question is what you do with the clone.
“The blastocyst produced by this process has to successfully implant in a human uterus to ever become a human being.”
This is patently false as well. Biologically speaking, it is a human being regardless as to whether it is able to implant or not. It is a biological fact that you and I were once both a blastocyst. You have a philosophical personhood theory that you are confusing with science.
“”Therapeutic cloning involves reproducing cells, not people.””
Again, look at the diagram from the wiki article. You will see that the only difference between thereputic and reproductive cloning is what we do with the blastocyst. You also used the word person above which against tells me you are confusing science and metaphysics. If you have a metaphysical problem with considering an embryo or blastocyst a person, that’s fine, but the fact is, we all began life in the blastocyst stage and SCNT is designed to create a blastocyst clone of you.
And BTW, for Bystander and those who think this is all a myth, read this quote
“A solution to the immune rejection problem [caused by ESC not matching the patient] would be to generate isogenic ESCs from somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) embryos derived from the patients’ own cells, a concept commonly referred to as “therapeutic cloning”.”
This is from Stanford http://hesc.stanford.edu/research/programs/scnt.html who very much supports ESCR. Listen to actual honest (but misguided) scientists who support ESCR. You will learn that SCNT, which is the same thing as therapeutic cloning, creates a human embryo which is a clone of the patient and who has stem cells that you strip mine in order to inject into the patient, thereby killing the cloned embryo. You literally create a human being to kill it. EVERY honest scientist will admit that.
Oh also anonymous,
“What is your source for your claim that the unnucleated egg is “fertilized” by a somatic skin cell?”
it’s an ENUCLEATED oocyte i.e. an oocyte whose nucleus has been removed.
“The blastocyst produced by this process has to successfully implant in a human uterus to ever become a human being.”
Wrong. A human blastocyst is already a human being, since we know that every human blastocyst created sexually (including via in vitro fertilization) is already a human being, and any human blastocysts created via SCNT would be equivalent to those created sexually.
“Reference the Dennis Turner case where his PD returned.”
Again, Dennis Turner testified before Congress that he was eager to receive a second adult-stem-cell treatment. That’s because the first one helped him to live several years with his Parkinson’s symptoms in check. If the ASC treatment were as much a failure as you suggest, Rayilyn, I doubt he’d be looking for numero dos. Adult stem cells are easier to work with because they’re far more controllable, whereas ESCs, with their overhyped pluripotency, are far less stable, and tend to become teratoma in the lab. Not exactly what we want.
Bobby, the “anonymous” posted instead of my name. sorry. I don’t believe a microscopic undifferentiated cell is a human being, nor do I believe an acorn is an oak tree, or that seeds are actually plants. This is the crux of the matter. It is potential, not actual life and in my view it is ethical to use it to improve the lives of actual people, not potential people. It is impossible to give a cell 14th amendment “personhood” rights.
I called Turner 3-24-06 and 2-18-09 and he is in bad shape. As a person with PD who has had 2 DBS brain surgeries (Turner had one as part of the initial treatment)do not consider his case a “success” for ASCs as claimed by the Family Research Council.
Yo yo yo Rayilyn.
“I don’t believe a microscopic undifferentiated cell is a human being”
Well the blastocyst does differentiate within 24 hours of fertilization. And I think you mean human person. Biologically, there is no question that you were once an embryo; that is, that an embryo or blastocyst is a homo sapien. It is a whole being who, given the right environment, will grow into a fetus, baby, child, teen, and adult. These are simply stages of development, and biologically, it begins at conception. Any biology text book will confirm this. I have multiple quotes from biology texts which say that an organism beings life as an embryo; that is, after the “joining” of sperm and egg.
Now there is a distinction (falsely in my opinion) among philosophers between human beings and human persons. They admit that biologically the embryo is a human being, but it does not satisfy a certain criteria like consciousness or viability or some other criteria to disqualify it from enjoying the status of human person.
So it must be realized that we are dealing with human beings from a scientific standpoint. As your next line indicates, your discrepancy is philosophical in nature.
“nor do I believe an acorn is an oak tree, or that seeds are actually plants.”
The acorn/oak tree analogy confuses the philisophical notion of accidents and substance of a being. Acorn and oak tree are all accidental terms (meaning they only describe a specific stage not pertinent to what-it-is) to describe the larger genus quercus which it belongs to. This is just like the term embryo and adult are accidental terms used to describe the larger group of what-it-is which is human being or homo sapien. So when you say an acorn is not an oak tree, I totally agree. A fetus is not an adult, a baby is not a teen. But they both belong to the substance human, just like an acorn and an oak tree both belong to the genus quercus.
The same thing goes for the seed and plant analogy. But another problem with this is that we give value to plants and seeds based on what it can do for us. Their value is based not on what it is, but what it can do for us. And that is fine. However, a human being has value and dignity simply because it is a human being. A seed is a means to an end. A human being should never be treated as a means to an end, yet as an end in himself.
“As a person with PD who has had 2 DBS brain surgeries (Turner had one as part of the initial treatment) do not consider his case a ‘success’ for ASCs as claimed by the Family Research Council.”
I’d call living practically symptom-free for about five years a success. I believe many a PD patient would like to have five such consecutive years. This doesn’t mean it’s a cure, but it’s a damn sight better than the job embryonic stem cells are doing. Of course, there’s political headway to be made by emphasizing ESCs, some believe, and so we continually focusing on a dead end, rather than on what’s actually helped more than one patient.
I’d address your unscientific rationale for why you don’t consider human embryos to be human beings, but the previous poster has already done a thorough job at that.
You don’t know what it is like to live with Parkinson’s for 13 years.