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ASRM BULLETIN
Volume 4, Number 28
July 12,
2002
President's Council On Bioethics Issues An Unfortunate Recommendation: Ban Reproductive Cloning; Institute Four-Year Moratorium On Cloning For Research
The President's Council on Bioethics, chaired by Leon Kass, MD, PhD, has issued its long-awaited report and recommendations on human reproductive and research cloning. Members of the Council were unanimous in their recommendation to permanently ban as unsafe and unethical cloning for the purpose of human reproduction, but expressed a variety of different views in their individual statements on the issue of whether and how cloning for biomedical research should be permitted. Those opinions sifted out into three broad categories: permit cloning for biomedical research now, with appropriate regulation (7 Council members); institute a moratorium (3); and ban human research cloning (7). Their final recommendation: a four-year ban on research cloning. In his letter to the President, Chairman Kass advised that a thorough federal review be undertaken during the moratorium period in order to "help to clarify the issues and foster a public consensus about how to proceed, not just on cloning-for-biomedical-research but on all the related reproductive and genetic technologies."
It is unfortunate that, in spite of the Council's resolution to resist a pat consensus, they decided to make this recommendation. As Council member Janet Rowley remarked, four more years of ignorance is not effective public policy. Much more effective would be to lift the ban on federal funding for embryo research and to establish working, comprehensive regulations for the field.
At least, in his letter to the President, Chairman Kass was willing to call the moratorium what it really is- a ban. While the Council foresees the four-year ban as an opportunity for expanded and deeper public discourse on the issue, it is more likely to be an indefinite and costly postponement of the discussion. The greater public is easily distracted and, in the tumult and coil of current events, its attention will not long remain focused on a subject that is scientifically, philosophically, and emotionally difficult.
After the four years are up, all of us will have lost ground. Patients don't have time to wait for cures as their health and quality of life deteriorate. They can appreciate that research takes time, following a circuitous path, one discovery not necessarily leading directly or promptly to the next. But they cannot countenance the deliberate shut-down of an entire field of extremely promising work. A moratorium of this length is tantamount to a ban.
Investigators will be forced to abandon their projects and take up new ones or move to more research-friendly shores. When the moratorium expires, they will have the choice of backtracking or continuing with current projects. Most will choose not to pick up again the projects they were forced to abandon four years earlier. At the same time, no new scientists will be trained in this work in this country. Although progress will be made in countries that allow cloning for biomedical research, like the UK and Saudi Arabia, cures that will be discovered will not be immediately or easily available to US patients. And the United States will have lost its competitive edge in a field of research that it has led from the beginning.
Following the Council's example, we can look to literature for wisdom:
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W. Shakespeare (Julius Caesar) |
It is now up to Congress and the President to consider the Council's reasoning and recommendations and decide how to proceed.
For the report, Human Cloning and Human Dignity: An Ethical Inquiry, go to http://www.bioethics.gov/
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