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By LAURIE MCGINLEY
Staff Reporter of THE
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Harry and Louise are back.
The fictional couple starred almost 10 years ago in television commercials that helped torpedo President Clinton's health-care overhaul plan. Now the same actors playing the same characters have taken aim at President Bush's effort to ban all forms of human cloning.
The new Harry-and-Louise campaign will make its debut in the Washington area on Wednesday night's episode of "The West Wing," on NBC-TV and later will be shown in home states of several key lawmakers. The ads are sponsored by CuresNow, a nonprofit group recently founded by entertainment-industry executives, led by some who have children with juvenile diabetes. The Hollywood executives say cloning technology offers their children the best chance of a cure.
THE CLONE WARS
Excerpts from Harry and Louise's dialogue in a new ad in favor of cloning research:
Louise:
One bill puts scientists in jail for working to cure our niece's diabetes.
Harry: So ... cure cancer, go to jail?
Louise: Alzheimer's, heart disease. Take your pick.
Harry: Is it cloning?
Louise: Nooo ... uses an unfertilized egg and a skin cell.
Harry: So, not making babies?
Louise: Just lifesaving cures.
To View the
Ad, play here.
The commercials were written by Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli, the same
public-affairs company that created the original $20 million Harry-and-Louise
campaign, in the fall of 1993. In those ads, sponsored by the Health Insurance
Association of America, Harry and Louise express vague but intense fears about
government involvement in health care. The ads proved highly controversial:
Democrats blasted them as distortions and Republicans praised them as insightful.
The new ads are hitting the airwaves as a showdown vote looms in the Senate. Sens. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, and Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, are pushing a bill that would prohibit human cloning either to produce a child or to conduct research and treat disease. Similar legislation already has passed the House.
Backers of the Brownback bill include conservative organizations, religious groups, antiabortion organizations and a few environmental and women's groups. Opposition to the Brownback bill is being led by the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, which includes researchers, patients' groups and the biotechnology industry. CuresNow is a member of CAMR.
With the Senate expected to debate cloning before the Memorial Day recess, both sides are revving up their advertising and lobbying efforts. The National Right to Life Committee and its state affiliates recently launched radio ads in eight states in support of the Brownback bill. In those ads, a man and a woman chat about cloning, then the woman exclaims: "Can't they see that it's just not right to make human embryos and harvest them like crops?" Stop Human Cloning, a group headed by the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, William Kristol, also recently ran radio and television ads backing the Brownback bill.
Members of the entertainment industry, such as celebrities Christopher Reeve, paralyzed in a riding accident, and Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, have taken part in biomedical debates for some time. But CuresNow, which stands for Citizens United for Research in Science and Ethics Now, represents a ratcheting up of activity. The group was loosely organized last fall, then renamed and relaunched in early March, with a volunteer executive director.
The founding members are Douglas Wick, producer of "Gladiator"; his wife, Lucy Fisher, former vice chairman of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group at Sony Pictures; Jerry Zucker, director of "Ghost" and "Airplane," and his wife, Janet Zucker, producer of "Rat Race" and "First Knight." Both couples have children with juvenile diabetes.
This past Friday, the Zuckers held a fund-raiser at their Los Angeles home both for the anti-Brownback campaign and for general support of medical research. More than 100 people attended, including filmmaker Barry Levinson, Paramount Chairman Sherry Lansing, and actors Warren Beatty, Annette Benning and Cuba Gooding Jr. Attendees heard presentations from four prominent scientists who support research cloning. CuresNow has raised about $500,000 already and received pledges of more donations. Still in its infancy, the group aims to keep its membership small while making use of its abundant resources and influence.
"We can't let a narrow group of people make the decision for my child and for the entire country," Mr. Zucker says.
As the cloning battle escalates, both sides are choosing their words to sway the undecided. The new Harry and Louise ads go to great pains to distinguish research cloning from reproductive cloning.
In the basic cloning procedure, embryos are made by inserting a cell from an adult into an unfertilized egg. The resulting embryo, genetically identical to the cell donor, could yield stem cells useful in treating diseases such as juvenile diabetes, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, scientists say. However, if the embryo were transferred into a woman's uterus, it could develop into a cloned individual.
Wary of negative public perceptions about cloning, proponents are struggling with the term. In one of the ads, Louise says the technology isn't cloning at all; it's simply inserting an adult skin cell into an unfertilized egg. In fact, she is describing what is commonly known as "therapeutic cloning," or cloning for treatments or research.
"They don't want to say cloning, and they don't want to say human embryo," says Mary Cannon, executive director of Stop Human Cloning, who hasn't seen the ads. "They try to obfuscate the language."
The ads also play down that it could take years for cloning-based therapies to be developed. In a second commercial, Louise describes an early-stage lab technique to her niece as a "cure" for her diabetes.
Ben Goddard, who wrote the scripts and co-directed the spots with Mr. Zucker, says the ads make clear the group backs research, not reproductive cloning.
The stark differences of conviction on the issue suggest a legislative stalemate is highly likely. Whatever happens in Congress, both sides say they will raise the issue in the November elections.
-- Antonio Regalado contributed to this article.
Updated April 24, 2002