Washington Editor

WASHINGTON - Republican Sen. Sam Brownback is trying some creative ways of getting the Senate to support a ban on both reproductive and therapeutic cloning.

Most recently, Brownback, of Kansas, latched an amendment to a terrorism bill that would prohibit the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) from issuing patents for cloned humans and for the technology that creates them. The measure ended up failing in a 65-to-31 vote. (PTO policy prohibits patents on human body parts and on whole humans.)

Last week Brownback stopped the Senate debate on cloning before it started by refusing to accept debate terms proposed by the Democrats. Before that, he floated the idea of a two-year moratorium on all forms of cloning. (See BioWorld Today, June 13, 2002.)

Meanwhile, on the other side of the debate, a group of bipartisan senators led by California Democrat Dianne Feinstein are pushing legislation that bans reproductive cloning but permits therapeutic or research cloning. Feinstein, and others in her camp, including Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), are reportedly tweaking their legislation to specify what researchers would be allowed to do in the field of human embryo cloning. (See BioWorld Today, June 7, 2002.)

Sixty votes are needed for either bill to pass in the Senate. If Brownback can't get the votes for his complete bill (S1899), he could continue his efforts through amendments.

"The bipartisan version is probably getting close, but I don't know if they have 60 votes yet," Michael Werner, vice president of bioethics for the Washington-based Biotechnology Industry Organization, told BioWorld Today. "There's clearly going to be a showdown vote between the bipartisan proposal and some proposal that stops the research. We don't know what it will look like, and we don't know when, but we know it will happen and it will be a close vote. We're optimistic though."

In recent weeks it has been reported that about 20 senators have not stated which way they will vote. But as predicted, President George W. Bush supports the Brownback legislation as strongly as he backed a similar measure that passed the House last summer in a 265-to-162 vote. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 2, 2001, and Nov. 27, 2001.)

While Brownback's patent amendment didn't make it through, the senator indicated he'll consider the two-year moratorium in the form of an amendment.

In response, the Bethesda, Md.-based Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology on Monday sent a letter to senators encouraging them to reject Brownback's moratorium.

"We agree with the proponents of the moratorium that this issue is fundamentally a moral one - there is no scientific issue to be resolved that would constitute the basis of the moratorium," read the prepared statement signed by the group's president, Robert Rich. "But we believe that it is a moral imperative more than anything else that impels this research. Indeed, we believe that it would be immoral to delay vital research that promises to help so many people."

On the other side of the issue, Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Focus on the Family released a statement in support of Brownback, saying, "Human embryos are not a natural resource, like lumber, nor are they farm animals to be bred for profit and sold as commodities. Civilized people do not resort to cannibalizing their young for spare cellular parts."

Many scientist argue that therapeutic cloning applications could lead to revolutionary therapies for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, heart disease and other debilitating conditions. Others say there are alternative approaches and therapies that abrogate the need for human embryonic stem cell research.