Ban on human cloning patent fails in Senate
An attempt by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to ban patents on human clones and human cloning processes failed yesterday when the Senate voted 65-31 to cut off debate on the terrorism insurance bill he'd hoped to add the ban to. "We need to make it clear to the Patent Office that a human embryo created by a cloning process is a person, not a piece of property, not livestock that can be owned, and therefore should not be allowed to be patented," Brownback said in the Senate Monday. "I had hoped we could have had a fair debate and vote on my amendment. Unfortunately, the leadership is trying to prevent my amendment coming to a vote."

The Family Research Council is furious—at the White House. "The vote on the Brownback amendment would likely have been the most significant pro-life vote this session of Congress," president Ken Connor said in his daily Washington Update:

The votes were 'there' to pass the Brownback amendment. White House lobbyists, however, were anxious to avoid a vote on the Brownback amendment and wanted a 'clean' bill. They … assured some senators that family groups would not score the bill. Relying on that misrepresentation, several senators changed their votes. … In the legal arena, material misrepresentations of fact are called 'fraud.' In Washington, such misrepresentations are called 'politics.'

The Family Research Council, Connor made clear, will score the bill. (Why wait? Here's how your senator voted.)

Brownback says he'll continue to push for cloning bans.

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