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U.S. House of Representatives Bans Human Cloning
WASHINGTON, August 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - With the support of U.S. President George W. Bush, the United States House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to ban human cloning by a vote of 265-162, online news sources said.
"The administration unequivocally is opposed to the cloning of human beings either for reproduction or research," Cable News Network (CNN) quoted an administration policy statement released Monday.
In line with its complete prohibition, the House also rejected by 249-178 an additional measure, proposed by Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) and Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.), that would have allowed human cloning for medical research while banning reproductive cloning, CNN and BBC's online services reported.
The absolute ban, which would impose a $1-million fine and up to 10 years in prison for violators, was sponsored by Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL).
"I don't think there's any way that you can prevent the creation of human clones without stopping it from the very beginning," Rep. Weldon told CNN. "We're talking about crossing a threshold here. We're no longer talking about using the quote-unquote excess embryo in the freezers for stem cell research. We're now talking about creating embryos for destructive research purposes."
The BBC online service quoted Rep. J C Watts (R-Okla.) as saying before the vote, "This House should not be giving the green light to mad scientists to tinker with the gift of life."
The White House's statement, quoted by CNN, said, "The moral and ethical issues posed by human cloning are profound and cannot be ignored in the quest for scientific discovery."
But, supporters of the amendment, which was backed by medical groups and the biotech industry, insisted that a balance needed to be reached between ethics and scientific progress.
A sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-PA), said that the White House needed to consider more deeply "cures for diseases, ailments and illness that may be lost should we entirely ban this technology."
"Why would we condemn the world and future generations not to have this miracle?" Rep. Greenwood said.
"This is not creating life. This is giving life," he said in the CNN report, referring to the potential of research on cloned tissues to find treatments for a list of crippling or life-threatening illnesses.
The bill must go through the Senate before it becomes law, CNN and BBC said, and Rep. Greenwood expressed confidence that the absolute ban would not be upheld. "The Senate has actually had this vote in the past and voted the other way - to keep therapeutic cloning legal," he told the BBC's World Today.
The ban on human cloning touches on another science-and-ethics issue that the U.S. president is currently considering: embryonic stem cell research. Such stem cells are usually obtained from embryos left over by in-vitro fertilization; Bush must decide whether or not to allow federal funding for this research.
Researchers have told Congress that stem cells and compatible DNA needed by patients can also be obtained from cloned tissue.
But, some supporters of stem cells research oppose cloning for these purposes, and some opponents have warned that federal support for cloning for stem cell research could lead to more dangerous cloning experimentation.
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