The tortured progress of the struggle in the US Senate over legislation to ban or regulate research involving the production of cloned human embryos continues (see reports in
Reuters Health, 13 and 14 June). Last year, the House of Representatives passed a Bill to ban all forms of human cloning. Since then, competing bills have been introduced in the Senate that would either ban all cloning, or ban reproductive cloning while allowing research on "therapeutic cloning", but none of these bills have yet been put to a vote. Last week, leaders of the Democratic majority in the Senate offered a debate on both bills on Friday 14th and Monday 17 June, followed by a vote on Tuesday 18th. No amendments would have been allowed to either bill, and any bill passed would have had to attract at least 60 votes to be referred back to the House of Representatives. Opponents of cloning research rejected this suggestion on the grounds that it would stifle debate and favour the more liberal bill. Republican Senator Brownback, who has spearheaded efforts to secure a complete cloning ban, has said that he will try to force cloning legislation to a vote by attaching parts of the proposed legislation as amendments to other bills before the Senate. Brownback has now also proposed legislation that would ban the patenting of human embryos and of techniques for creating cloned embryos; this is seen by supporters of therapeutic cloning research as an attempt to ban such research by other means.