WASHINGTON —While Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, DS.D., continues to delay the vote on a human cloning ban, eager scientists have said that the first human clone will likely be born within a year.

Infertility researcher Panos Zavos made international headlines when he told reporters May 15 that his Kentucky-based cloning team will produce a human clone this year, with the delivery of a cloned baby in 2003.

Testifying before a congressional subcommittee, Zavos said the cloning genie has escaped and is getting bigger every day. “There is no way that this genie is going back into the bottle,” he said.

The words and deeds of researchers such as Zavos are proof to cloning opponents that time is critical.

“Sen. [Sam] Brownback has been ready since February,” said Erik Hotmire, the Kansas Republican senator's spokesman. Brownback's bill, S. 1899, is identical to the cloning ban passed by the House. It would make all forms of human cloning illegal.

Initially Daschle had promised a vote on all cloning bills in February, but then postponed the vote until June.

Molly Rowley, spokeswoman for Daschle, told the White House Bulletin in late May that a vote on cloning would likely occur in June.

“Between next week and the Fourth of July, Sen. Daschle hopes to get to minimum wage, cloning and possibly in conjunction with that, genetic discrimination,” Rowley said.

‘Clone and Kill’

Other cloning bills, such as one offered by Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would allow researchers to create cloned humans, but only if they promised to extinguish the life before it got past the embryonic stage.

Pro-life activists have called the Specter-Harkin bill the “clone and kill” bill because it would force certain humans to be killed once they reached a certain age.

“The Brownback bill is the only one that truly bans human cloning,” said Cathleen Cleaver, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Every single other bill —and there are maybe four others —allows cloning, but [they require] that you have to kill them. They are literally creating a class —really a subclass —of humans that must be killed before they grow too much.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, calls himself pro-life but supports research on embryonic humans and recently supported the Specter-Harkin cloning bill.

“I come to this issue with a strong pro-life, pro-family record. But I also strongly believe that a critical part of being pro-life is to support measures that help the living,” Hatch said April 30.

But Hatch did not call the procedure cloning.

“As I considered the ethical appropriateness of nuclear transplantation in regenerative medicine research, two facts stand out,” he said. “The egg, with its nucleus removed, is never fertilized with sperm. The resulting unfertilized, electrically activated embryo will not be transplanted into a woman's womb so there is no chance of birth.”

An organization called CuresNow has brought back the famous couple “Harry and Louise,” who became minor celebrities with their ads opposing President Clinton's health care plan. The new ads are in support of the Specter bill.

“How can we explain to our children that our own government is now the greatest obstacle to a cure for their disease?” said Lucy Fisher, who served as a vice chairman of Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group and now is co-chairman of CuresNow.

Fisher claimed that the Brown-back bill would “decimate the hope of millions of Americans, including children afflicted with degenerative and debilitative conditions.”

But syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, who is not pro-life yet supports the Brownback bill, said that Hatch, Fisher and other cloning supporters are playing word games.

“It does no good to change the nomenclature. The Harry and Louise ad asks, ‘Is it cloning?’ and answers, ‘No, it uses an unfertilized egg and a skin cell.’ But fusing (the nucleus of) a ‘somatic’ cell (such as skin) with a enucleated egg cell is precisely how you clone,” he wrote in his May 10 column for the Washington Post.

Doug Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, called the Specter bill a “phony ban” designed to give cover to politicians back home.

“It's so that [South Dakota Democrat] Tim Johnson can say, ‘Look, I voted for a ban on human cloning,’” he said.

Doug Johnson warned that a recent Gallup Poll showing 61% of Americans opposing the cloning of human embryos, even for research, is not enough to stop cloning.

“Regardless of the 61% opposition to human cloning, the biotech industry might get its way if the public doesn't get active in this debate,” Johnson said.

Sen. Brownback's spokesman Hotmire said that only a full ban on human cloning would prevent the “commodification” of human life that he said would be inevitable if Specter's bill allowing research on cloned embryonic humans becomes law.

“Once they are created, who owns them? Can they patent them? Can a research company own someone's DNA? As we know, they are trying to create cloned human DNA. Is it legal to own a human?” Hotmire asked.

Hotmire said these concerns transcend the pro-life community. He cited the support of Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who has co-sponsored the Brownback bill. In addition, environmentalists such as Brent Blackwelder of Friends of the Earth also oppose the “genetic manipulation of humans.”

Bush Backs Ban

Currently neither side has the necessary 60 votes to end cloture and bring the bill to a vote. But pro-life activists are pleased that President Bush has again made his opposition to the Specter bill known.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson wrote a letter to Brownback on May 15 stating, “The administration strongly supports a complete ban on all human cloning.”

He added, “As the president has stated, anything other than a total ban would be both unethical and ineffective, a ban on the implantation of cloned embryos being virtually impossible to enforce. Moreover, a law that authorized research cloning would likely result not only in the creation of human embryo farms but also in international trafficking in human eggs.”

Thompson said the president does not support Specter's bill, and suggested Bush would likely veto it if passed by the Senate.

“I know that the president would very much like to sign a comprehensive bill that unequivocally bans all human cloning,” Thompson said. “I am equally certain, however, that the administration could not support any measure that purported to ban ‘reproductive cloning’ while authorizing ‘research’ cloning, and I would recommend to the president that he veto such a bill.”

Joshua Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.