AFTER A FAILED EFFORT to ban human cloning in 1998, Congress has taken up the issue once again. There have been hearings in both the House and the Senate, testimony from fertility doctors and cult leaders who want to clone human beings, and heavy rhetoric about the coming of a Brave New World. In the coming legislative showdown over how—or whether—to ban human cloning, there are two basic alternatives. The first is the Weldon-Brownback bill, which would ban the cloning of human embryos no matter the purpose, while still allowing some forms of scientific research, like “cloning DNA molecules” and “duplicating stem cells.” A much looser approach, favored by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) and Representative James Greenwood, would ban “reproductive cloning”—the creation of cloned embryos with the intention of bringing them to birth. But it would allow “therapeutic cloning”—the creation of cloned human embryos that can be used for research so long as they are eventually destroyed. All the action, for now, is in the House. The Democratic Senate does not see this as a top priority. Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer, in a March press conference, said President Bush “believes that no research—no research—to create a human being should take place” and “he opposes it on moral grounds.” But the Bush administration—still in bureaucratic limbo over whether to fund federal research on embryonic stem cells—has put little pressure on members of Congress to take decisive action against human cloning. And Fleischer’s statements can be construed to support either Weldon-Brownback or BIO-Greenwood. Meantime in the House, there is a battle brewing. This March, Greenwood, a five-term Republican from the Philadelphia suburbs, chaired the first Bush-era hearings on human cloning in the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Greenwood’s rhetoric was impressive—mixing quotations from Aldous Huxley, Shakespeare, and G.K. Chesterton with pleas for caution “before we open the floodgates to a new kind of human being.” But Greenwood is, in this debate, the biotech industry’s man. In 1998, he won BIO’s award as “Legislator of the Year.” And while BIOwould prefer a “moratorium” on reproductive cloning to an outright ban, the biotech industry seems likely to embrace any “pro-therapeutic cloning” legislation that Greenwood puts forward. In the meantime, Dave Weldon, a Republican from Florida and a practicing physician, has gathered over 100 cosponsors, including 18 Democrats, for the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, which is being pushed by Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, in the Senate. The case for the bill—both that cloning threatens human nature and human dignity and that in order to stop “reproductive cloning” Congress must stop all embryonic cloning—is made most eloquently by bioethicist Leon Kass, who testified last week before the Judiciary Committee: This is not an issue of pro-life vs. pro-choice. It is not about death and destruction or about a woman’s right to choose. It is only and emphatically an issue of baby-design and manufacture, the opening skirmish of a long battle against eugenics and against a “post-human” future. Once embryonic clones are produced in laboratories, the eugenic revolution will have begun. And we shall have lost our best chance to do anything about it and to assume responsible control over where biotechnology is taking us. The Weldon bill itself lays out in great detail the case for a comprehensive ban on cloning: A world of therapeutic cloning would mean the multiplication in laboratories of endless numbers of cloned embryos. At the same time, the in-vitro fertilization industry is completely unregulated. Implantation of an embryo in the womb is both a simple and completely private procedure, protected under the doctor-patient relationship. And once an embryo were implanted, there would be no way to enforce a ban on reproductive cloning short of forced abortion. A few weeks ago, the House leadership held a private meeting to decide on a strategy for moving a ban on human cloning to the floor—and, more significantly, on which ban to move. The meeting included Dick Armey, Tom DeLay, James Sensenbrenner (chairman of the Judiciary Committee), Billy Tauzin (chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee), Greenwood, and Weldon. Armey, a leader in the effort to ban cloning in 1998, threw his weight behind the Weldon bill. He called for another round of hearings in the Judiciary Committee (which began last Thursday and included Kass’s testimony), with the intention of moving the Weldon bill (or its equivalent) to the floor for a vote “by August, hopefully earlier.” The Weldon bill has support from across the ideological and political spectrum. Daniel Callahan of the Hastings Center, the godfather of modern bioethics, testified at Thursday’s Judiciary Committee hearing in favor of the Weldon bill—endorsing the logic that to stop human cloning Congress must move to stop it from the beginning, “with draconian measures” if necessary. The Progressive Caucus, chaired by Democrat Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, has organized a Hill briefing later this week that will bring together “environmental, feminist, and social justice leaders” to make “the progressive case against human cloning.” President Bush, meanwhile, is feeling pressure from social conservatives to move more decisively. Last week, seven conservative leaders (including Charles Colson, William Bennett, James Dobson, and William Kristol) sent a letter to the president stating “our deep concern about the imminent threat to human life and dignity posed by the emerging reality of human cloning, and to urgently ask for your assistance and leadership to counter this threat.” Top Bush aide Karl Rove and members of the Bush speechwriting office have met privately with conservative intellectuals to discuss pending anti-cloning legislation, as well as the possibility of doing a major presidential address on bioethics. Bush is poised to act. House leaders want him to weigh in. As Weldon told me, “In a debate like this, there are always people who could go either way. There are fence-sitters. There are people who don’t fully grasp the scientific issues involved. If the president came out forcefully, it could be very helpful.” This is especially true given that Greenwood still has every intention of offering his pro-therapeutic, anti-reproductive cloning legislation and fighting the Weldon bill in committee and on the floor. If the 1998 debate is a preview, the biotech lobby will try to repeat its success by casting the Weldon bill as a threat to everything from in-vitro fertilization to stem-cell research to reproductive rights. But “this is not about abortion rights,” says Andrew Kimbrell, co-organizer of the upcoming Progressive Caucus briefing and executive director of the left-leaning International Center for Technology Assessment. “If anything, cloning is anti-choice. Once we do it, we may not be able to control who does it to us.” What could decide the issue this time is a move by the White House. Proponents of a total ban are, as Weldon said, “cautiously optimistic.” Bush has championed the “culture of life” in speeches and—by halting federally funded research on human embryos, at least for now—shown a willingness to face down the scientific research establishment. The key may be whether he can succeed in separating the politics of cloning from the politics of abortion, and thereby create a conservative-progressive coalition for a cloning ban. Such an alliance would seek to head off the worst nightmares of the new genetics, and would have as its common moral ground reverence for nature and protection of the powerless from the powerful. Perhaps unique among the issues before this Congress, cloning does not leave a lot of room for compromise and tradeoffs. The technical advances in the field are such that the first human clones may be among us in a matter of years, not decades. President Bush and Congress will either take this opportunity to set the moral speed limit for the genetic age, or they will allow events to overtake—and perhaps eventually remake—us all. Eric Cohen is a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.
