Saturday, October 23, 1999
Bishops to Taft: Don't fund cloning
BY MICHAEL HAWTHORNE
Enquirer Columbus Bureau
COLUMBUS — Ohio's Catholic bishops want lawmakers to prohibit universities from using the state's $10.1 billion settlement with tobacco companies to finance research into human embryos or cloning.
Gov. Bob Taft's proposal for spending the windfall would set aside $1.8 billion for biomedical research during the next quarter-century. An emerging form of research suggests that human embryos and fetuses have a unique type of cell with the potential to treat a variety of ailments.
In an extension of a debate dividing Congress as it haggles over a new federal budget, Catholic bishops and others opposed to abortion contend Ohio's tobacco payments shouldn't be used to study embryonic stem cells. They note that embryos and fetuses must be destroyed to get the cells.
“We are in favor of finding cures for cancer,” said Jim Tobin, associate director of the Catholic Conference of Ohio. “But if they are going to spend billions on research, we have questions about how they are going to go about doing it.”
A draft of an amendment prepared by the conference, obtained by The Cincinnati Enquirer, would require recipients of tobacco-funded research funds to agree to “not knowingly use any money from the grant for human cloning activities or use a human embryo for research.”
The amendment has created a quandary for Senate Republican leaders, who already are having trouble brokering a deal on how the tobacco money should be spent.
Some GOP senators want all or some of the money used for tax cuts. Mr. Taft and Republican legislative leaders want the money set aside for school construction, anti-smoking programs, medical research and assistance for the state's tobacco growers.
While the bishops contend it is unethical and immoral to ex periment on embryonic and fetal tissues, lawmakers also are being lobbied by pharmaceutical companies and researchers who think more study could lead to medical breakthroughs.
The goal of some researchers is to take stem cells, the building blocks of life, and turn them into desired types, such as liver cells for cirrhosis patients or brain cells for those with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
Sen. Roy Ray, an Akron Republican who chairs the committee reviewing tobacco settlement legislation, introduced a bill earlier this year that would prohibit human cloning.
Anti-abortion activists, though, took issue with other language in the bill that would allow biomedical research using “cloning technology that would not result in the replication of an entire human being.” They saw the bill as a green light for stem-cell research.
Mr. Ray couldn't be reached for comment Friday. Mr. Tobin said he was instructed by Senate leaders to negotiate a compromise with research universities and pharmaceutical companies before offering the bishops' amendment.
The University of Cincinnati is expected to compete for money from the tobacco settlement with Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic.
“I see this as seed money to push us into the future,” Donald C. Harrison, UC's senior vice president and provost for health affairs, said after Mr. Taft announced his plan for the settlement.
Dr. Harrison couldn't be reached for comment about the amendment drafted on behalf of the Catholic bishops.
Congress has prohibited federal funding of embryo research for the past four years, but the National Institutes of Health is proposing new guidelines for publicly funded studies in the future.
The guidelines would prohibit researchers from directly obtaining stem cells from embryos, because that would cause their destruction. Researchers would be allowed to study stem cells only from embryos that someone else had destroyed or from aborted fetuses.
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