Human Cloning Prohibition Act Of 2007

Floor Speech

HUMAN CLONING PROHIBITION ACT OF 2007 -- (House of Representatives - June 06, 2007)

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Mr. PITTS. 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.

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Mr. PITTS. 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.

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