Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2007

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2560) to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to prohibit human cloning, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2560, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2007. Tomorrow, the House will debate S. 5, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which will expand the number of stem cell lines that are eligible for federally funded research. Similar to legislation passed in the House earlier this year with overwhelming bipartisan support, the goal of S. 5 is to accelerate scientific progress towards cures and treatments for a wide range of diseases and debilitating health conditions. When we debated the bill in January, opponents of the bill chose to muddle the debate by offering a motion to recommit involving cloning, a topic unrelated to

Mr. Speaker, just briefly, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania knows, our committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, did have robust hearings on cloning several years ago where we brought in several scientists as well as a cult called the Raelians who are actually trying to clone human beings, and that is why we need this kind of limitation.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the cosponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I just would make two points toward the gentleman from New Jersey's comments. The first one is the Weldon- Stupak bill, which he says he supports, also would make it a crime for a woman to carry a cloned embryo in her uterus as a

pregnancy. Frankly, we think that cloning should be a crime. I am surprised to hear the gentleman say that he does not think it should be.

Secondly, the so-called Greenwood-DeGette bill from several sessions of Congress ago that he is referring to is a completely different bill than this bill today. People should probably read the legislation in front of them to see that all this bill does is make reproductive cloning illegal.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), a real leader on these issues.

(Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve.

Mr. Speaker, we have no further speakers, and so we're prepared to close. And, with that, I reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Well, I've been in Congress now 10 years; and some days I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland. Today happens to be one of them. Because when you listen to the arguments from the other side you'd never dream that the bill under consideration right now is a ban on human reproductive cloning.

Maybe I will start by talking about the status of the law in the United States today. Right now, in the United States, SCNT, somatic cell nuclear transfer, is legal. It is legal today, and there is nothing about H.R. 2560, the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, that changes that or alters it in any way.

We hear the other side talking about egg farms and forcing women to donate eggs and all of that. If that was going to happen, it would be happening today because this bill does nothing to stop the status of current law on SCNT or therapeutic cloning.

What we do have happening today, however, is there are some unethical scientists who are trying to do reproductive cloning. They are trying to take the results of SCNT, implant them in women's uteruses and create cloned human beings.

I just heard my colleague from Pennsylvania talking about Dolly the sheep and all of the failed attempts with animal cloning before Dolly the sheep. He is absolutely right. It is a terrible problem, and that is why it is reprehensible and immoral to try to clone human beings. That is also why we need to make it illegal in this country.

He also talked about the example of South Korea, and he's also absolutely right about South Korea. There was an unethical researcher in South Korea who, with no ethical standards or controls, tried to make experiments and lied about the results.

By the way, that's why we need to pass S. 5 tomorrow, because currently in this country there are no ethical controls either over embryonic stem cell research or SCNT research, controls which we could really use in this country, and they certainly could have used in South Korea, but that's all sort of aside from the point.

The point is, right now, in this country it is not illegal to clone a human being for reproductive purposes, and there's a national consensus that it should be.

I do want to apologize to my ranking member, Mr. Barton, about the process. Perhaps there should have been notice. But the truth is, there is a consensus on reproductive cloning.

This is a simple bill, and we have tried, over the years in Congress, to ban reproductive cloning. The reason we haven't been able to do it is because the other side gets up and makes all of these false arguments, which then complicate the situation, and we have not been able to ban reproductive cloning. We felt that under a suspension calendar, with a clean vote and a simple bill, it would work.

For people who try to say, well, somehow this is going to cause more problems, I can't believe that they would support reproductive cloning. I can't believe that the opponents of this bill would actually vote against a bill that bans reproductive cloning. I can't believe that they would say they think that we would encourage reproductive cloning in this country.

I would tell my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, this vote will be a clear vote today. The vote will be, do you oppose human reproductive cloning and think that it should be a Federal crime in this country, or are you in the pocket of the special interests who will make any argument because they don't think this bill goes far enough to ban other types of research, which are legal right now in this country and for which the results which they fear have not happened to date.

I will say, let's make the clear statement in Congress. Let's stand up for our constituents. Let's ban reproductive cloning today. There is no Member of Congress who supports human reproductive cloning, which is exactly what this bill prohibits.

Vote ``yes'' on H.R. 2560, and then we can have the rest of this debate tomorrow on S. 5.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in opposition to H.R. 2560. This bill is being marketed as a ban on human cloning. However, H.R. 2560 does nothing to prevent human cloning. In fact, the bill allows for unlimited cloning of human embryos but prevents women and doctors from trying to implant one of these embryos to initiate a pregnancy. In practice, this means that embryos will be cloned, used for experimentation, harvesting, research, then assigned a death sentence. So cloned embryos would be required by law to die. Not only does this bill allow the practice of cloning to move forward, it also mandates the killing of those human embryos.

The bill before us today is a ruse. It is not a ban on cloning. It is a permission to clone, and I hope no one here today will be confused about what we are being asked to do. The bill's supporters state that this would ban reproductive cloning, but this claim is highly misleading because the language does not restrict the actual act of human cloning by allowing for somatic cell nuclear transfer, a confusing and technical way of defining research cloning.

The bill before us is called the Human Cloning Prohibition Ban, and you might think that it does what it says instead of the opposite of what it says. If it did what it said, I would vote for it. Part of the problem we are having is the consequence of having had no committee process to determine what the bill actually does. We have had no hearings. We have had no markups. In fact, the bill was not even introduced until last night. And now the bill that nobody has seen is on the suspension calendar. Intentional or otherwise, this is another duplicity. The suspension calendar is for noncontroversial measures, like naming post offices, not for highly controversial legislation that is a wolf in Dolly the sheep's clothing.

This bill is bad policy, and so was the process by which it got here. How many times will we have this discussion? The week before Memorial Day we discussed a bill on Medicare payments that came to the House floor the same way. Yesterday, a resolution on how Congress will handle future ethics

matters was introduced on the same day that it was inserted in the suspension calendar with no committee hearings.

The Senate could be forgiven for concluding that the new majority promises for open government are still not being realized after 5 months.

The bill is opposed by the White House. In their statement of administration policy which came out, they said that this would ``prohibit human cloning for reproductive purposes but permit the creation of cloned embryos or development of human embryo farms for research which would require destruction of nascent human life.''

That is exactly what H.R. 2560 does. It crosses a new moral line by making it a criminal act to let the cloned embryos survive. To put it directly, this bill would create a class of living human beings that must be killed under the law.

Mr. Speaker, this is not progress. It is a disturbing step in the wrong direction. It should be rejected on this floor, and I urge my colleagues to oppose the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), a leader on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, at this time I would like to yield 5 minutes to a leader on this issue, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon).

Mr. Speaker, at this time I want to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of Energy and Commerce, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the time remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Price).

Mr. Speaker, let me just say in conclusion that, as we all know, Dolly the sheep was a cloned animal. Let me remind you that Dolly the sheep was the 277th try. There were 276 before her who were defective and deformed and died. In fact, the history of cloning is replete with defects, deformity and death; and as they seek to create little human embryos for the purposes of research and experimentation and harvesting and death, we should remember this fact.

The researcher in South Korea that failed to identify what he was doing, Dr. Hwang, and his team obtained 2,000 eggs from over 100 women that they paid for their cloning attempts.

Human cloning exploits women. It ushers in an era of eugenics. It embraces a utilitarian view of humans. It involves the creation of little human embryos for research experiments. And for these reasons and all the reasons that are stated, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This bill before us today entitled the Human Cloning Prohibition Act, is better entitled the ``Human Clone Implantation Prohibition Act.'' Essentially what it does is make it a crime to implant a cloned human embryo in the uterus of a woman.

While the gentlewoman from Colorado has said this is a very different bill from the Greenwood substitute, it is true if you sit down with the two of them and read them, they read differently; but the net effect, let's be serious, is the same. It is the goal pursued by many research scientists, who I assume do not ascribe to a belief in the sanctity of human life, that they want to begin experimentation on human embryos produced through the process of human cloning.

My position when we began debating this issue 5, 6 years ago, remains the same. There are a host of problems with this, not the least of which is that I and millions of Americans like me believe that human life is sacred and we should not be wholesale producing it to be experimented with in the lab and then discarded when the experimentation is done.

Are we really trying to say to the American people we want to make the human embryo the lab rat of the 21st century?

I will add, this is going to create a huge demand for human eggs. It has been very surprising to me to see so many people on the left who claim to be great champions of women's issues, it is going to create a lot of pressure for more human eggs. And the way you get human eggs, it is not a simple, overnight procedure. You have to give women a powerful medication that produces something called superovulation. It has the potential for complications, depression in some 25 percent of the women who get these drugs, possible significant complications requiring hospitalization called the superovulation syndrome.

And who will be donating their eggs to all these research labs? We all know who it will be, it will be women who really need the money. You will probably have problems and complications, suicides from depression. What will end up happening is they will end up going overseas to Third World countries where they can't bring litigation.

This is why many leaders in the feminist movement chose to support the Stupak-Weldon bill over this alternative. It is just down right bad policy.

Let me say as well, the lady said previously that the women could, under my previous bill, could be criminally prosecuted. I disagree wholeheartedly. I thought the language of the Stupak-Weldon bill was very clear, that the criminal act would be the creation of the human embryo through the process of somatic cell nuclear transfer. That is the way they created Dolly; that is the way this process begins.

Let me just say in closing, the process by which we have undergone this, when we were in the majority, we had committee hearings. We allowed a substitute. And to rush this to the floor on the suspension calendar is an inappropriate way for us to deal with a very, very significant issue.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a profound slippery slope. They will not be satisfied with doing research on human embryos. The next target will be the human fetus itself, creating human models of disease so research scientists can do research on certain forms of human disease by doing research on human embryos and fetuses. That is the direction we are going, patenting some of those diseased human embryos.

I say this is a place where we should be drawing the line. We should defeat this on the suspension calendar. I believe if you brought it forward under regular order, it would go down under regular order, and I encourage all of my colleague to vote ``no'' on this piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Representative DeGette, for being such a leader on this issue in the past and allowing me to join with her today to offer this very commonsense measure regarding the banning of human reproductive cloning.

I rise in support of this act today. I do so because to me the bill before us is relatively simple. This is a straightforward ban on human reproductive cloning, taking material through somatic cell nuclear transfer and turning that material into a living, breathing human being. As Representative DeGette said, nothing more, nothing less.

Under this law, if someone uses cloning technology to initiate a pregnancy and creates a cloned human being, they would face severe criminal and civil sanctions.

This legislation is something that the vast majority of the American public supports, and it is something that all Members of Congress I think should support as well.

In Connecticut, as part of our State's historic Stem Cell Investment Act, which I was very honored to have authored, we recognize that human being reproductive cloning is a practice that perverts the promise of science; and we banned it outright in our legislation. In fact, I think it is pretty amazing that we are standing here having this debate today, that the Federal Government has, until today, not stepped forward and said that human reproductive cloning, bringing that material to the stage of a human being created from that material, is illegal. We should do what we did in Connecticut here today.

Mr. Speaker, I understand that there are some members who want to turn this ban on human reproductive cloning into a ban on somatic cell nuclear transfer, called by some therapeutic cloning, and I understand the discomfort many Members have with this innovative line of stem cell research. Personally, for me, I join the scientific community in my belief that it is this research that holds the most potential for lifesaving treatments and cures.

But I recognize there are those who disagree. However, the debate surrounding this particular disagreement is not the subject of today's legislation. Today's legislation is simply about the line that we all can agree to draw, that which clearly and cleanly prohibits the manipulation of cells or embryos into a cloned human being.

The moral and ethical questions surrounding somatic cell nuclear transfer are legitimate subjects for debate. But that debate will occur later this week when we revisit the comprehensive stem cell authorization bill coming back to this House from the Senate.

Today, Mr. Speaker, our task is simple: Ban what we all agree is beyond the scientific and ethical pale, human reproductive cloning.

We are dealing with an issue as complicated as cloning technology. The morass of scientific arcana and the ease of sound bite simplification can obscure the simple facts. So let's be clear. Today, human cloning, creating a replica of a person's DNA, implanting an embryo into the womb of a woman and creating a new human being out of that material, that practice is legal today in this country with exceptions such as Connecticut and other States that have done the right thing and banned it. With the enactment of this legislation, human reproductive cloning will be illegal. Nothing more, Mr. Speaker, nothing less.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, beware of false and misleading bill titles.

H.R. 2560, rushed to the floor today after only being introduced several hours ago, is misnamed the ``Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2007.''

The fact is, this bill doesn't ban any human cloning at all. Absolutely none. Researchers are absolutely free, are given the green light, to clone human life to their heart's content, so long as they kill and destroy the cloned human embryo at some point, perhaps weeks, after its creation. As a matter of fact, the legislation makes it a serious crime to allow a cloned human being to survive pass a certain point.

In other words, this bizarre piece of legislation would make it illegal not to kill a cloned human being; and the penalties are stiff, up to 10 years in prison and a $10 million fine.

By redefining human cloning as ``implantation'' rather than the creation of a new human being that would be then transferred into a uterus or a functional equivalent, this phony ban sanctions unlimited human cloning for research. Even more bizarre, under the bill, if a woman were to have a cloned human embryo implanted in her womb, she could go to jail for up to 10 years and/or be fined up to $10 million. Is that something we want to vote for? I think not. The plain language in the Weldon-Stupak cloning ban penalizes those who facilitate the creation of the clone--not the woman.

My colleagues, I am sure all of us are aware of the fact that a cloned human embryo will be indistinguishable from an embryo created using in-vitro fertilization. Dolly the Sheep looked just like every other sheep. How will this be enforced? If a woman is found carrying a cloned baby, are you willing to fine her and send her to jail for 10 years?

Mr. Speaker, the United States should join many countries, including Canada, Germany, Italy and France, in totally banning all cloning. The Democratic leadership should bring the Weldon-Stupak bill to the floor, instead of the DeGette pro-cloning measure.

Finally, what a difference a few years makes. In 2003, Ms. DeGette said, ``We are not and we do not support creating embryos for the purpose of research.'' This legislation begs the question. Apparently you do. Why aren't you bringing a total ban before this body?

I would point out when a similar bill to H.R. 2560 was brought to the floor as an amendment in the nature of a substitute by Congressman Jim Greenwood we voted it down 174-231. Charles Krauthammer wrote, and I think this is very insightful, that ``Greenwood,'' and read that now DeGette, ``is a nightmare and an abomination. It sanctions, licenses and protects the launching of the most ghoulish and dangerous enterprise in modern scientific history, the creation of nascent cloned human life for the sole purpose of its exploitation and destruction.''

I urge my colleagues, let's pass a real ban on cloning, not this phony ban.