07-28-2001

ETHICS: Divided Committee OKs Ban on Human Cloning

A sharply divided House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on July
24 to outlaw human cloning, even though Democrats argued that the bill
could hinder research into Alzheimer's disease, organ transplants, and
spinal injuries by banning projects that produce human embryonic
cells.


Under the bill (H.R. 2505), which the panel approved on an 18-11
party-line vote, anyone who clones or tries to clone a human being for
reproductive or research purposes would face up to 10 years in prison and
civil penalties of at least $1 million. Those penalties would also apply
to anyone involved in the trafficking of embryos produced through human
cloning. The bill would allow some types of research that involve
"cloning techniques," so long as those procedures do not produce
human embryos. The bill would also allow the cloning of animals other than
humans, and of plants.


Committee members roundly agreed that humans should not be cloned for
reproductive purposes, but Democrats argued that the bill went too far.
They said, for example, that people in need of organ transplants could
benefit from human-cloning technology if scientists develop a way to
create organs that are an exact genetic match by cloning patients' stem
cells. Ranking member John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., said the legislation
could halt ongoing studies in this area, and he urged committee members
not to "play doctor."


Conyers also blasted a provision that bans products derived from
experimental human-cloning technology from being imported into the United
States. "May we have more compassion, please?" Conyers
asked.


Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., offered a substitute bill that would have
maintained a ban on reproductive cloning, but allowed cloning for research
and therapeutic purposes. Republicans firmly opposed the proposal. Cloning
embryos for research purposes, said Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., is
tantamount to "re-creating" and then "destroying" a
human life. "It's tiny, it's microscopic, but an embryo is a human
life," Hyde said. "It's not a speck of dust or cartilage or
sinew."


Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., disagreed, saying that "a clump of cells
developed in a petri dish" is not a human life. "I don't regard
an embryo as a human being," Nadler said. "I have no moral
compunction at all about killing that embryo for therapeutic or
experimental purposes."


After a long debate in which several lawmakers acknowledged that they
would probably never agree on the question of precisely when life begins,
the committee rejected Schiff's amendment 11-19.


Molly M. Peterson

National Journal