On November 9^th, the Judiciary Committee of the Nebraska Legislature will hold a hearing on cloning and embryonic stem cell research. The hearing was prompted by shenanigans involving Legislative Bill 700, which would ban cloning in Nebraska .

 

The Legislature does not debate all 800 or so bills introduced in a given year. There is a filtering system. Bills are assigned to committees. Committees conduct hearings and decide which bills to advance for consideration by the full body.

 

After a hearing in the spring and debate within the 8-member Judiciary Committee, LB 700 received the 5 “yes” votes it needed for advancement and was reported out of committee. Within hours of that vote, the committee chairman, Sen. Brad Ashford, changed his “yes” vote to “not voting,” which had the effect of reeling the bill back into the committee because it no longer had a majority of “yes” votes for advancement.

Sen. Ashford said he changed his vote because he still had questions about the science of cloning and its relation to embryonic stem cell research. The Nov. 9 hearing will feature scientific experts addressing those topics.

Stem cell research itself is not at issue, nor is embryonic stem cell research. The issue of using fertility clinic embryos for stem cell research also is not at issue. Although LB 700 proposes a comprehensive cloning ban, even so-called “reproductive” cloning is not at issue because both sides oppose it.

The sole issue is whether cloning should be banned as a means of producing embryonic stem cells for research. It boils down to two crucial questions: 1) Does cloning produce an embryonic human? 2) Should Nebraska ban the production of clones in order to destroy them as embryos to harvest their stem cells?

Based on the science of embryology, the answer to #1 is yes. Cloning (like in vitro fertilization) is simply a way of producing a human embryo outside the womb. The cloned embryo is in effect a twin of the person who provided the donor cell to make the clone.

Based on basic medical research ethics, the answer to #2 is yes. Cloning for stem cells should be banned because research is unethical if it is likely to harm or kill a human. This “clone and kill” approach – clone humans and then kill them as embryos to obtain their stem cells – violates that principle.