ISSUES RAISED BY HUMAN CLONING RESEARCH HEARING ...

38these issues have not yet even been adequately discussed. Many of these issuesstrike at the heart of beliefs and values that are inherent in the human condition.What does it mean to be an individual? How should we view our parents, brothers,sisters, and children? How does the world around us influence our intellectual, physicaland spiritual development? These are just a few of the questions raised byhuman cloning. In my view, reproductive cloning would devalue human beings bydepriving them of their own uniqueness.To allow human reproductive cloning without a full and fair discussion of theseand other moral issues would be irresponsible. Worse yet, it could lead to a backlashthat would stifle the numerous beneficial applications of therapeutic cloning technology—someof which I have described today—that could lead to cures and treatmentsfor some of our most deadly and disabling diseases.ConclusionMr. Chairman, human reproductive cloning remains unsafe. Moreover, the ethicalissues it raises have not been fully debated throughout our society. Therefore, thevoluntary moratorium on human reproductive cloning should remain in place andno federal funds should be used for human reproductive cloning.Thank you. I’d be happy to answer any questions.Mr. GREENWOOD. Thank you, Dr. Okarma for your testimony.Dr. Westhusin, you’re recognized for 5 minutes.STATEMENT OF MARK E. WESTHUSINMr. WESTHUSIN. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity tocome here and visit about this issue. I start off by saying that I’mcurrently an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University and I’vebeen working with animal cloning since 1987, so I’ve literally beeninvolved with tens of thousands of nuclear transfer procedures andexperiments in science that related to nuclear transfer and cloningall the way ranging from just studying and trying to understanddevelopmental biology all the way up to actually producing live animals.There are really just three points that I want to focus on. A lotof us know the benefits from cloning animals and therapeuticcloning of humans, but there are three points that really I wouldlike to focus on. One is basically just the risks that are involvedwith cloning even animals that we have to deal with today. AndI’ll give you some examples of some data. I’d also like to talk a littlebit about this idea that you could potentially screen for embryosor fetuses and pick out those that were abnormal and abort those.And then finally, I just might make a few comments on some ethicalconcerns.But what I wanted to do is part is I’m just going to read frommy testimony.Although animals can be cloned by nuclear transfer using somaticcells as nucleus donors, the efficiency is still extremely low.In cattle where the majority of the work has been completed, problemswith early embryonic development do not seem to be a factoraffecting development. Material recognition is not a factor and infact, you can produce a reasonable pregnancy rate if you go checkanimals at 35 days of gestation. The problem is that after 35 daysof gestation or during the first trimester, approximately 90 percentof the pregnancies are lost or abort.The most common developmental malformation observed to dateis just problems with the placental development which leads to allkinds of other problems that include developmental abnormalitiessuch as immature lungs, cardiovascular disease, pulmonary hypertensionand a number of things that we’ve, in fact, documented.VerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:46 May 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 71495.TXT HCOM2 PsN: HCOM2