October 2005 Newsletter
Priscilla Thain, Newsletter Editor

State Assembly Passes Cloning Bill

On a 59-38 vote, the Wisconsin Assembly 59-38 passed a bill (AB 499) on June 26, 2005 that would ban and criminalize reproductive and therapeutic cloning. On June 20, at a Joint hearing of the Assembly Committee on Children and Families, and the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Corrections and Privacy, Professor Alta Charo (Law and Medical School, Department of Medical History and Bioethics) and Chancellor John Wiley testified in opposition. Along with industry leaders, they highlighted the need to ban reproductive cloning, which creates babies, but to leave researchers the option of pursuing therapeutic cloning to study diseases, and to potentially use the technique for treatment of cures. The Assembly committee passed the bill on a 5-2 vote before it went to the full Assembly. The bill was scheduled for a vote in the State Senate on September 27.

PROFS registered the UW-Madison faculty in opposition to this bill at the hearing and with the State Ethics Board. PROFS opposes any restrictions on embryonic stem cell research but agrees with Professor Charo and Chancellor Wiley that a ban on reproductive cloning would make sense.

Representatives Gregg Underheim (R-Oshkosh) and Terry Musser (R-Black River Falls) introduced an amendment that would have allowed therapeutic cloning but prohibit human cloning, but the amendment did not pass.

The Wisconsin Technology Council issued a statement that said, among other things, "Any effort to ban therapeutic cloning would chill stem cell research in Wisconsin, which pioneered this science, and send the disturbing message that Wisconsin does not welcome responsible, ethical research conducted by our top scientists." The Wisconsin Biotechnology and Medical Device Association said, "Our science-based community of Wisconsin businesses believes that the line should be drawn between the use of cloning for scientific research and therapeutic (human health care) applications, and cloning for the purpose of human reproduction.

Professor Charo stated: "While reproductive cloning is a danger to children, non-reproductive cloning could save their lives. Cloning cells from someone with a genetic disease could produce tissue in which we study how the defective gene malfunctions, and help us develop drug treatments, perhaps reducing the number of human volunteers at risk in later clinical trials...Legislation that protects valuable non-reproductive uses of cloning technology while also guarding against its dangerous use to make a baby is largely consistent with the recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and with the recommendations in the National Academy of Sciences' two reports on stem cell research and reproductive cloning.

The National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Biological and Biomedical Application of Stem Cell Research states in its report to the National Academy that there is a scientific rationale for not foreclosing this avenue of research and for distinguishing clearly between SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) to prevent transplant rejection and SCNT to create a fetus. Similarly, after two years of review, the California Advisory Committee on Human Cloning, which was commissioned by the California Legislature to conduct a comprehensive review of the issues raised by human cloning, unanimously recommended that California should ban human reproductive cloning but should not introduce legislation that would prohibit therapeutic cloning."

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