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Statement for the Record on Human Cloning by Harold Varmus, M.D.
Director, National Institutes of Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Before the House Committee on Commerce, Subcommittee on Health and Environment
February 12, 1998


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I am Harold Varmus, Director of the National Institutes of Health. My statement addresses how somatic cell nuclear transfer offers potential benefits for medical research and   more...medical practice. This technology was first brought to public attention when Ian Wilmut and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, published in the February 27, 1997 issue of Nature, the results of their cloning experiments in sheep. The likely benefits from these studies are contributions to animal husbandry and medical research. But the importance of these contributions has been dwarfed by the public's fascination with Dolly, a lamb cloned from the cell of an adult sheep. The successful cloning of an adult sheep sharply focused public attention on the possibility of cloning a human being.

The President, recognizing the ethical and societal implications of the Dolly experiment, requested the National Bioethics Advisory Committee to examine this issue and report recommendations within 90 days. The Committee concluded "that there should be imposed a period of time in which no attempt is made to create a child using somatic cell nuclear transfer." They further cautioned that "Any regulatory or legislative actions undertaken to effect the foregoing prohibition on creating a child by somatic cell nuclear transfer should be carefully written so as not to interfere with other important areas of scientific research." Their final suggestion was to formally re-evaluate this issue in three to five years. Subsequently, over 67,000 scientists involved in reproduction biology signed a voluntary moratorium on the cloning of a human.

This hearing is a continuation of the public discourse on this issue. It is imperative that this discourse be informed and comprehensive. I would like to discuss briefly the science that was used to create Dolly, and describe the scientific and medical promises of this technology.

SOMATIC CELL NUCLEAR TRANSFER WHAT IS IT?
I am certain that many people have heard of somatic cell nuclear transfer. I am also certain that there is much confusion and misunderstanding about this technology.

In order to understand this technology, it is necessary to briefly review normal sexual reproduction in mammals (see the top of Chart 1). Normally, an egg and sperm join to create a fertilized egg which develops into an embryo and ultimately a newborn animal. In this situation, the progeny receives genetic material from both the mother and father.

In the Dolly experiment, a lamb was produced using the technology of somatic cell nuclear transfer. Unlike the normal process of sexual reproduction in which an egg and a sperm each contribute genetic material, somatic cell nuclear transfer is asexual. A somatic cell is any cell except the egg cells or sperm cells. Somatic cells contain the full complement of chromosomes. In contrast, an egg or a sperm contains half that number.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer is done in the following way (see the bottom of Chart 1), using sheep as an example. First a normal sheep egg cell is taken from a ewe and the nucleus (the cell structure containing the chromosomes) is removed, yielding an egg cell containing the nutrients and other energy producing materials that are essential for embryo development, but not the chromosomes. Next, a somatic cell is isolated--in the case of Dolly, a cell grown in cell culture from the mammary tissue of an adult sheep. Under certa  less