Big Matt Attack

The National Academy of Sciences has deemed human cloning to be dangerous and likely to fail. Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from a body cell, died prematurely and with a number of abnormalities.

In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences called for a ban on cloning humans. The group did not, however, call for a ban on cloning for research purposes, or therapeutic cloning.

Both endeavors begin the same way: The nucleus is removed from an egg like a pit from an olive. A donor's genetic material is then sealed into the egg. Under the right conditions, the egg will grow into a blastocyst genetically identical to that of the donor.

If the intention were to make a clone, the blastocyst would be implanted in the uterus of a surrogate mother. In research cloning, the result is not a live birth but a harvest of stem cells, the undifferentiated supercells that can take the shape and perform the function of cells damaged by disease.

A year ago, a team working in South Korea was the first to derive stem cells from a cloned human embryo. This process holds promise because the stem cells are tailor-made to the donor's DNA, much like an organ donated by a healthy twin.

Therapeutic cloning uses no sperm. This is a critical point for opponents of Bartle's bill. Last month, an emissary from the Stowers Institute explained the science to the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council. Mayor Kay Barnes, already familiar with the subject, interrupted at one point. "No sperm has gotten near the egg," the mayor said, rapping the table for emphasis.

The "no sperm" argument prevailed when the U.S. Congress considered a bill that would have made felons out of scientists who engaged in reproductive or therapeutic cloning. The bill passed the House in 2002, but a similar measure, sponsored by Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, died in the Senate. The New York Times noted that Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Republican with anti-abortion credentials, said his decision to oppose the ban "was not -- and I repeat not -- a close call."

The debate is in many respects a battle of terminology. Following the example of some other research facilities, Stowers officials avoid using the word cloning, preferring the more technical phrase "somatic-cell nuclear transfer." Stowers officials also do not like to use the word embryo.

But if therapeutic cloning does not produce embryos, Bartle says, then Dolly was not a sheep.

Missouri Right to Life enthusiastically supports Bartle's ban. The group's president, Pam Fichter, attended the Judiciary Committee meeting on the night of the vote. "It is a human life," she told the Pitch before the meeting.

Bartle appreciates Fichter's support, but he doesn't want the debate framed by stereotypes.

"I will grant you, I am an evangelical Christian," he says. "Everybody knows that about me. I'm very open about that, you know. That's not a popular thing to be in our society, the presidential election notwithstanding. Among the business elite, that's not popular.

"But because I am, and I'm the main proponent of the legislation, it assists them in kind of creating this 'Hey, it's the enlightened scientists and business leaders against the unenlightened religious folks. It's the intellectuals against the not-so-intellectuals.' ... I've seen this time and again. Basically the undertext is, 'If you have a brain and you can think, there is no way you would be against this.'"

Bartle rejects the notion that a stand against therapeutic cloning is a stand against science. He says adult stem cells -- which carry none of the ethical baggage -- provide opportunities to find cures, citing a recent Tufts University discovery of apparently potent stem cells coaxed from bone marrow. "That's only the beginning," he says. "Basically, the commercial pressures are going to force the researchers to go with adult stem cells."

In the meantime, there are embryos to be saved. Bartle equates embryonic stem-cell research with performing medical experiments on death-row inmates.

"The whole premise of Western medicine has been based on the premise of 'First do no harm.' If we have any doubt in our minds whether these human embryos are, in fact, nascent human life, shouldn't we resolve that in favor of protecting that human life and saying, 'Hey, let's go a different direction'?"

But the same people who condemn scientists for using embryos to develop therapies mute their criticism of couples who seek fertility treatments. With in vitro fertilization, more embryos are created than are implanted in the woman seeking to get pregnant. The leftovers are destroyed or stored indefinitely.

Groups such as the Missouri Right to Life do not hold fertility patients responsible for these embryos, however.

"Missouri Right to Life has not made any official statements concerning IVF as a process of assisting in reproduction, because IVF, per se, does not necessarily involve killing a person," says Jim Cole, general counsel for Missouri Right to Life.