Independent Perspective News

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON— Despite entreaties from President Bush to ban any type of cloning, either for reproduction or research, the Senate today refused to take up a Republican measure to impose a six-month moratorium on the technology.

The measure was rushed to the Senate floor in response to an announcement last week by a Massachusetts biotechnology company that it had created the first cloned human embryos, not to make babies but to develop tissues for treating disease. All the embryos died, but the experiment revived the cloning controversy, which had been dormant since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The bill failed overwhelmingly on a procedural motion, in part because it was bundled with another contentious but unrelated measure that would have allowed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Republican leaders had hoped to force a vote on the issues by packaging them into an amendment to an unrelated bill governing retirement benefits for railroad workers.

The strategy failed when the maneuvering became so complicated that even its supporters ended up voting against it for various reasons. Of 95 senators present, 94 voted to prevent the oil drilling and cloning bills from coming up for a vote. The lone exception was Senator George F. Allen, Republican of Virginia.

The Republican leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, vowed during the debate to bring both bills up again. "These issues are not going to go away," he warned.

It now appears unlikely that the Senate will enact cloning legislation this year. But the issue is expected to come up next year, and already the Senate has scheduled hearings on cloning. The first is set for Tuesday; Mike West, president of Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts biotechnology company that conducted the recent cloning experiment, is scheduled to be the lead witness.

The cloning bill would have put into place, for six months, legislation identical to a bill adopted by the House of Representatives in July. The House measure, which President Bush supports, would ban cloning for either reproduction or research, and would outlaw the sale of treatments developed from cloning.

Senator Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican who is the Senate's leading opponent of cloning, argued that the moratorium should be put in place while the Senate debated a permanent ban. He called it "a very modest step."

There is widespread agreement among lawmakers that human cloning — the making of babies that are genetic replicas of adults — is immoral and should be outlawed. But the question of cloning for research, also called therapeutic cloning, is, for many lawmakers, more complicated.

At the same time, the issue is tangled up with another controversy, that of stem cell research. Stem cells are primordial cells that can grow into any type of tissue in the body, and scientists say they hold great promise for treating and curing disease. But in order to realize the full promise of stem cells, researchers will have to create cells that will be compatible with patients' own immune systems. One way to do this, experts say, is through therapeutic cloning.

"I don't see any problem in banning human cloning," said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. "I think we'd get 100 to 0 on that one." But, she added, "Why would we want to stop and derail stem cell research?"

But Mr. Brownback urged his colleagues not to mix cloning with stem cell research. "Some have said this is about stem cells," Mr. Brownback said. "It's not about stem cells. This is about cloning. This is about taking a human individual and creating him by a cloned technology similar to that used to create Dolly the sheep."

Mr. Brownback's bill draws support from across the political spectrum, including environmental groups, abortion opponents, women's advocates and Christian fundamentalists. But advocates for patients, as well as the biotechnology industry, are strongly in support of therapeutic cloning, and therefore oppose the Brownback legislation.

Daniel Perry, executive director of the Alliance for Aging Research, a patient's group, said today that the bill "would set a very dangerous precedent of bringing the police powers of the federal government into the laboratories." He added, "We need a lot fuller debate on this."