ISSUES RAISED BY HUMAN CLONING RESEARCH HEARING ...

82My name is Dr. Thomas Murray. I’m a member of theNational——Mr. GREENWOOD. Dr. Murray, I forgot to tell you that your CongresswomanConnie Morella asked me to say hello.Mr. MURRAY. Thank you very much. And she’s actually in a differentdistrict, but she’s a lovely person.National Bioethics Advisory Commission, I’m a member of theCommission, but that’s more or less a voluntary job in that all ofus also have day jobs. The Commission was established by thenPresident Clinton in 1995 to advise and to make recommendationsto the President through the National Science and TechnologyCouncil on bioethics issues and their policy implications.My fellow Commissioners on NBAC, as it’s known, come from avariety of disciplines and backgrounds to include research scientists,religious scholars, physicians, lawyers, members of thepublic and others.My day job is President of a place called the Hastings Center, anonprofit, independent, nonpartisan research institute in Garrison,New York that addresses fundamental ethical issues in health andmedicine, the biomedical sciences and the environment. I shouldnote that at least I believe three of the people quoted in the members’own statements this morning on cloning including Leon Kass,Dr. Author Caplan right behind me at this time and Laurie Andrewsare all fellows of the Hastings Center and I’m proud to seethem represented on both sides of the debate.I also serve on the Committee on Ethics of the American Collegeof Obstetricians and Gynecologists and in my own work I do a lotof writing and thinking about parents and children and the ethicalimplications of reproductive technology, genetics and the like.When Dolly’s cloning was announced in February 1997, thenPresident Clinton asked NBAC to review the legal and ethicalissues associated with cloning technology and asked us to report in90 days. I’ll try to describe briefly what we said at that time andthe process we followed. Since then, I should note that the Commissionhas issued three other reports with two more to be completedsoon, one on research internationally, particularly in a developingworld and another on the general oversight and protectionof research on human subjects.Now there’s a saying in the field of bioethics, my field, that goodethics begins with good facts and I was pleased to see that thissubcommittee apparently operates on the same presumption andthat you started with a scientific panel. NBAC did too. It might beof interest to note that of the first eight witnesses, the first wasa scientist and the following seven theologians representing fourimportant religious traditions, traditions important both in theUnited States and around the world. We also invited ethicists, legalscholars and the general public. We commissioned a paper onissues related to cloning.NBAC focused on a very specific issue. It seems precisely the onebefore this subcommittee, namely, where you would use geneticmaterial, so called somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning, put it inanother person’s egg and try to create a child by cloning. We didn’tlook at other procedures like embryo splitting, nor did we look atthe broader areas of embryo research. We were focused on tryingVerDate 11-MAY-2000 07:46 May 24, 2001 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00086 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 71495.TXT HCOM2 PsN: HCOM2