Cancer

British media reported last June that a male nurse, 31-year-old Stephen Knox, was cured of leukemia after receiving an injection of stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

A British medical journal, The Lancet, reported in January 2002 that a 52-year-old woman with severe cancer of the thymus gland showed significant improvement after she received a transfusion of stem cells from her daughter.

Diabetes

David Ellis, a 44-year-old diabetic in Spokane, Wash., has cut his insulin doses in half since receiving an infusion of islet cells obtained from the pancreases of cadavers.

Eye disease

The clinical journal Ophthalmology reported last July that stems cells obtained from one eye can help reconstruct the damaged cornea of a patient's other eye.

Heart disease

Doctors in Germany reported in January that they injected stem cells in six patients' hearts and found five experienced improved blood flow.

Parkinson's disease

A 57-year-old patient's motor skills improved markedly after he received neural stem cells harvested from his own brain, according to a report in April 2002 presented at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons' annual meeting in Chicago.

Multiple sclerosis

Eighty percent of patients with advanced MS showed mild improvement after receiving their own previously collected stem cells, according to researchers at the University of Washington Medical Center.

Weldon introduced his bill (H.R. 234) just after the 108th Congress was sworn in. His ally in the Senate, Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas, submitted an identical bill (S. 245) three weeks later. But even with Republican control of the Senate, Weldon and Brownback face a difficult task: how to make the dangers of cloning vivid and compelling enough for the 20-odd swing votes in the Senate to gain a majority and pass a ban.

The next day, Brownback chaired a Senate subcommittee hearing on cloning that revealed just how low a standard some members of Congress are prepared to adopt. Leading the way was Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. He testified that, while he opposes "reproductive" cloning ― creating a clone and allowing it to live ― he supports "therapeutic" cloning ― creating a clone and killing it under "strict moral and ethical guidelines."

Hatch is a co-sponsor with Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, of a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would permit therapeutic cloning.

Combating the Illogical How does a senator who once sponsored a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion justify cloning and killing a human embryo?

Hatch left the subcommittee hearing without taking questions from Brownback or other senators on the panel, but he read from his prepared statement that "human life does not begin in the petri dish. I believe that human life requires and begins in a mother's nurturing womb," a conclusion he reached "after many conversations with scientists, ethicists, patient advocates and religious leaders and many hours of thought, reflection and prayer."

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