State Fights Federal Bill on Cloning

Presenting a bipartisan front against a proposed federal law they say would gut California’s new $3-billion embryonic stem cell agency, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein jointly denounced a U.S. Senate bill Tuesday that would criminalize all forms of cloning human embryos, including procedures done for research purposes.

“The people have spoken, and they have said in California: ‘We want you to go ahead with any and all embryonic stem cell research,’ ” said Feinstein, speaking at a news conference in a crowded foyer at a UCLA medical school building in Westwood. “But this research is in danger. If some in Washington get their way, this research will be stopped in its tracks.”

Schwarzenegger said he spoke Tuesday to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to seek his support, or at least cooperation, in Feinstein’s efforts.

“I told him how important it is to me and others,” Schwarzenegger said. “Maybe he is not all the way there yet, but maybe he can be. It is very important that as many people as possible let him and others know how they feel. The key is not to look at it as a Republican or Democratic issue.”

The joint appearance of the state’s most powerful Republican and most popular Democrat -- joined by Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- underscored continuing concern among backers of embryonic stem cell research about opposition in Washington.

One key issue in the debate is human cloning.

Researchers want to remain free to take cells from individuals who suffer from certain debilitating diseases and use the cells to clone embryos. The procedure is often referred to as “therapeutic cloning.” Some researchers believe that stem cells taken from the cloned embryos could provide important clues to how diseases develop and how they could be stopped. Such cell lines would be a genetic match for the donor, potentially allowing for the creation of rejection-proof therapies.

As with other forms of embryonic stem cell research, obtaining the stem cells would involve destroying the embryo -- indeed, California law requires that cloned embryos be destroyed no later than 12 days after creation to prevent any attempt to produce cloned babies.

Some supporters of laboratory use of embryonic stem cells fear that public support for the research may dwindle if opponents focus attention on cloning rather than the prospects for stem cells. One measure of that concern is that advocates of stem cell research prefer to avoid the label of cloning and instead use the technical term “somatic cell nuclear transfer.”

A bill has twice passed the House of Representatives that would punish scientists who engage in any form of cloning, whether intended for reproduction or research, with prison sentences of up to 10 years and fines of $1 million or more.

So far, a similar proposal in the Senate -- called the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2005 -- has not come up for a vote.

Schwarzenegger, Feinstein and other speakers on Tuesday urged Californians to voice their opposition to the bill (S 658), introduced by Sens. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.). They asked Republican Senate leaders to allow a vote on an alternative bill offered by Feinstein and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). That bill would ban cloning for reproductive purposes but allow scientific research to go forward.

“The people of California recognize the promise of stem cell research and believe we as a state should pursue it to its fullest potential in our effort to cure dreaded diseases,” Schwarzenegger said. The governor said he was asking Washington not to jeopardize the state’s desire to provide researchers with the “resources and the freedom to expand the frontiers of science.”

Schwarzenegger said he had asked Frist to allow Feinstein’s bill to come to a vote in the Senate. Lobbyists for stem cell research fear that Frist might bring forward several bills related to stem cells but not the Feinstein/Hatch bill. Their concern is that senators may feel they need to vote for some bill that would ban human cloning. If Brownback’s is the only bill on the table, it might pass, they say.

If Congress made so-called therapeutic cloning illegal, that would be particularly problematic for California. Proposition 71, which passed last year with 59% of the vote, expressly legalized and funded the procedure. Since then, South Korean researchers announced that they had refined the cloning process, efficiently creating new embryonic stem cell lines.

The South Korean announcement created concern here that American researchers had already fallen behind in a key biological field -- an area traditionally dominated by U.S. scientists.

“We cannot now afford to be slowed down by opponents who do not believe in the promise of this research,” said Bob Klein, chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine’s board of directors.

Already, the state agency has been stalled by lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the initiative. Until those suits are resolved, officials in the state attorney general’s office have said, state bonds supporting research cannot be sold. Klein and others are pursuing financing to allow research to go forward until the legal issues can be resolved.

Restrictions are in place in California to govern cloning research. The state was first to ban reproductive cloning. More recently, stem cell agency officials adopted sweeping ethical and research guidelines created by the National Academies’ National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine in the absence of clear federal guidelines.

For many patients, embryonic stem cell research remains the only hope for recovery.

Candace Coffee, 26, who has a rare and fatal condition called Devic’s disease, urged politicians to act now to take down barriers to research. Coffee, a UCLA graduate student and a former Miss Bakersfield, described the sudden onset of her disease: temporary paralysis and blindness in one eye while she was traveling in Tibet three years ago. Since then, she has struggled with severe pain. As she spoke of her problems, the 10 pills a day she must take and the scarcity of treatment, some at the news conference cried.

“This legislation is about me. Please don’t limit scientific freedom,” Coffee said, her voice cracking with emotion. “Don’t take away my hope.”