The Honorable Tom Daschle
Majority Leader
United States Senate
509 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Daschle:

The American Society for Cell Biology represents over 10,000 basic biomedical researchers across the United States and throughout the world.

The Senate will soon begin debate on legislation by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) that, if signed into law, would place severe criminal and civil penalties on both human reproductive cloning and nuclear transplantation to obtain stem cells. In addition, the bill would place identical penalties on the importation into the United States of cures and treatments developed using this technology. No responsible scientist supports the cloning of a human being. But S. 1899 goes far beyond the prohibition of cloning a human being: it outlaws and criminalizes promising biomedical research.

Furthermore, we believe that supporters of the Brownback bill base their endorsement on misleading claims by the bill's proponents. While opponents of nuclear transplantation claim that the research will lead to the establishment of "egg farms," scientific researchers, including Nobel Laureates, understand that a critical element of this research is that it will allow science to move beyond the necessity for egg cells. It is hoped that information learned from nuclear transplantation will eventually apply to somatic cells. The goal is to produce genetically matched embryonic stem cells from an individual's own cells. In his bill, Senator Brownback establishes severe civil and criminal sanctions for what has been described by Nobel Laureate and former National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus as an "incredibly promising avenue" of research.

One alternative to the Brownback bill that has been suggested is the implementation of a legislatively enforced moratorium on nuclear transplantation research. Some versions of the moratorium are only six months long while others are as long as five years. While well-intentioned, a moratorium, regardless of the length of time, is not a satisfactory alternative to the Brownback bill. It raises the specter of prolonged discussion and political machinations, perhaps stalling research on nuclear transplantation indefinitely. More important, it also sends a signal to the American research community, both present and future, that the United States Senate no longer wishes the United States to be the world leader in scientific research that it has been up to this time. In all likelihood, such a freeze on the scientific process in the United States will lead to an exodus from the United States of current investigators and cause the next generation of American scientists to pick other career options.

It is no exaggeration to say that a legislative moratorium would have a disastrous impact on the American biomedical community for as long as a generation. The Senate should, instead, unite around legislation that would prohibit reproductive cloning while allowing research on nuclear transplantation to progress under suitable regulation and oversight.

Sincerely,

Paul Berg, Ph.D.
Chair, Public Policy Committee
The American Society for Cell Biology
Cahill Professor of Cancer Research and Biochemistry, Emeritus
Director, Beckman Center for Molecular & Genetic Medicine, Emeritus
Stanford University School of Medicine
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1980