HR 1644 IH

To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit human cloning.

April 26, 2001

Mr. WELDON of Florida (for himself and Mr. STUPAK) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit human cloning.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001'.

SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

Congress finds that--

(1) some individuals have announced that they will attempt to clone human beings using the technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer already used with limited success in sheep and other animals;

(2) nearly all scientists agree that such attempts pose a massive risk of producing children who are stillborn, unhealthy, or severely disabled, and considered opinion is virtually unanimous that such attempts are therefore grossly irresponsible and unethical;

(3) efforts to create human beings by cloning mark a new and decisive step toward turning human reproduction into a manufacturing process in which children are made in laboratories to preordained specifications and, potentially, in multiple copies;

(4) because it is an asexual form of reproduction, cloning confounds the meaning of `father' and `mother' and confuses the identity and kinship relations of any cloned child, and thus threatens to weaken existing notions regarding who bears which parental duties and responsibilities for children;

(5) because cloning requires no personal involvement by the person whose genetic material is used, cloning could easily be used to reproduce living or deceased persons without their consent;

(6) creating cloned live-born human children (sometimes called `reproductive cloning') necessarily begins by creating cloned human embryos, a process which some also propose as a way to create embryos for research or as sources of cells and tissues for possible treatment of other humans;

(7) the prospect of creating new human life solely to be exploited and destroyed in this way has been condemned on moral grounds by many, including supporters of a right to abortion, as displaying a profound disrespect for life, and recent scientific advances with adult stem cells indicate that there are fruitful and morally unproblematic alternatives to this approach;

(8) in order to be effective, a ban on human cloning must stop the cloning process at the beginning because--

(A) cloning would take place within the privacy of a doctor-patient relationship;

(B) the transfer of embryos to begin a pregnancy is a simple procedure; and

(C) any government effort to prevent the transfer of an existing embryo, or to prevent birth once the transfer has occurred, would raise substantial moral, legal, and practical issues, so that it will be nearly impossible to prevent attempts at `reproductive cloning' once cloned human embryos are available in the laboratory;

(9) the scientifically and medically useful practices of cloning of DNA fragments, known as molecular cloning, the duplication of somatic cells (or stem cells) in tissue culture, known as cell cloning, and whole-organism or embryo cloning of nonhuman animals are appropriate uses of medical technology;

(10) in the preamble to the 1998 Additional Protocol on the Prohibition of Cloning Human Beings the Council of Europe agreed that `the instrumentalisation of human beings through the deliberate creation of genetically identical human beings is contrary to human dignity and thus constitutes a misuse of biology and medicine'; and

(11) collaborative efforts to perform human cloning are conducted in ways that affect interstate and even international commerce, and the legal status of cloning will have a great impact on how biotechnology companies direct their resources for research and development.

SEC. 3. PROHIBITION ON HUMAN CLONING.

(a) IN GENERAL- Title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after chapter 15, the following:

`CHAPTER 16--HUMAN CLONING

`Sec.

`301. Definitions.

`302. Prohibition on human cloning.

`Sec. 301. Definitions

`In this chapter:

`(1) HUMAN CLONING- The term `human cloning' means human asexual reproduction, accomplished by introducing the nuclear material of a human somatic cell into a fertilized or unfertilized oocyte whose nucleus has been removed or inactivated to produce a living organism (at any stage of development) with a human or predominantly human genetic constitution.

`(2) SOMATIC CELL- The term `somatic cell' means a diploid cell (having a complete set of chromosomes) obtained or derived from a living or deceased human body at any stage of development.

`Sec. 302. Prohibition on human cloning

`(a) IN GENERAL- It shall be unlawful for any person or entity, public or private, in or affecting interstate commerce--

`(1) to perform or attempt to perform human cloning;

`(2) to participate in an attempt to perform human cloning; or

`(3) to ship or receive the product of human cloning for any purpose.

`(b) IMPORTATION- It shall be unlawful for any person or entity, public or private, to import the product of human cloning for any purpose.

`(c) PENALTIES-

`(1) IN GENERAL- Any person or entity that is convicted of violating any provision of this section shall be fined under this section or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.

`(2) CIVIL PENALTY- Any person or entity that is convicted of violating any provision of this section shall be subject to, in the case of a violation that involves the derivation of a pecuniary gain, a civil penalty of not less than $1,000,000 and not more than an amount equal to the amount of the gross gain multiplied by 2, if that amount is greater than $1,000,000.

`(d) SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH- Nothing in this section shall restrict areas of scientific research not specifically prohibited by this section, including research in the use of nuclear transfer or other cloning techniques to produce molecules, DNA, cells other than human embryos, tissues, organs, plants, or animals other than humans.'.

(b) CLERICAL AMENDMENT- The table of chapters for part I of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the item relating to chapter 15 the following:

301'.

SEC. 4. SENSE OF CONGRESS.

It is the sense of Congress that--

(1) the Federal Government should advocate for and join an international effort to prohibit human cloning, as defined in section 301 of title 18, United States Code, as added by this Act; and

(2) the President should commission a study, to be conducted by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission or a successor group, of the arguments for and against the use of cloning to produce human embryos solely for research, which study should--

(A) include a discussion of the need (if any) for human cloning to produce medical advances, the ethical and legal aspects of human cloning, and the possible impact of any decision to permit human cloning for research upon efforts to prevent human cloning for reproductive purposes;

(B) include a review of new developments in cloning technology which may require that technical changes be made to section 3 of this Act, to maintain the effectiveness of this Act in prohibiting the asexual production of a new human organism that is genetically virtually identical to an existing or previously existing human being; and

(C) be submitted to Congress and the President for review not later than 5 years after the date of enactment of this legislation.

END