Re: (Fwd) Text of 14 Amendments

[Phil Tompkins <philtomp@xxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Thanks, again, Murray, for sounding the alert on the amendments.
And I'm really glad that so many of you folks on the list are
contacting your senators about the bill.  This is so important.

Now -- Brownback's amendment:

> (b) Prohibition: It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly
> attempt to create a human/animal hybrid by--

> (1) combining a human gamete and an animal gamete; or

> (2) conducting nuclear transfer cloning using a human egg or a
> human somatic cell nucleus.

Hmm.. Not quite what I expected.  I'm confused.

The original bill S2015 permits federally funding the extraction of
stem cells from exess embryos created during in vitro fertilization
and states the restrictions under which that would be carried out.

Browback's amendment is about two different lines of research,
and it is unrelated to funding source.

Item #(b)(1) -- who is attempting to do this, anyway?

Item #(b)(2) seems to apply to a possible way of causing adult
human cells to revert to an embryonic-like condition, from which
stem cells may be derived.  A few years ago (it seems like
yesterday) the head of Advanced Cell Technology in Wooster Mass
announced that his company had done this by inserting adult
human somatic cells into cow eggs that had been stripped of their
nuclei. No hyrbid was created, becaused the cow DNA was
supposed to have been removed.  There was no federal funding of
this.

I don't understand what Brownback is up to. I thought that he would
not support S2015.  Why is he adding to it a provision that he does
support and that does not change the orignal bill except to replace
the title?  Optimistic interpretation: Does he think that S2015 will
pass and therefore is taking this opportunity to add his provisions
as a rider?

And why 13 amendments, each of which applies to one word of the
original bill's title?

Phil Tompkins

p.s. I'll be away (N.Y.C.!) starting tomorrow morning and will have
no access to email until Monday night.