Clinton urges ban on cloning of humans

Christian Century, June 18, 1997

President Clinton, responding to the release of a report by scientists and ethicists, on June 9 proposed legislation that would ban human cloning but allow the continuation of research with potential medical benefits. "What the legislation will do is to reaffirm our most cherished beliefs about the miracle of human life and the God-given individuality each person possesses," Clinton said at a White House ceremony at which he accepted the report of the National Bioethics Commission.

The commission's report, released June 7, was sparked by the news three months ago that Scottish researchers had successfully cloned a sheep, giving rise to fears that the cloning of humans may be on the horizon. In its report the commission urged debate over the moral and ethical issues involved in cloning. "These are all exceedingly difficult issues," said panel chairman Harold Shapiro. "They are issues that go to the very nature of what it means to be human and to the very heart of what people think of as their families and individuality." The bioethics panel also sought to draw a line between cloning fully developed human beings and the possibility that cloning research could result in medical benefits, permitting the creation of human embryos that would not be implanted in a woman's womb.

Critics, however, were unpersuaded. Gracie Hsu, an analyst with the Family Research Council, accused the bioethics panel of avoiding the ethics issues involved in the cloning debate. Hsu said the panel's recommendation to allow human embryo research "is premised on the false assumption that human beings less than 14 days old are not completely human, thereby condoning the destruction of countless numbers of embryonic children for the sake of `research.'"

Representative Vernon Ehlers (R., Mich.) said he plans to introduce legislation that would not only ban cloning to create a human but also any human embryo research related to cloning.

A special panel of the United Church of Christ that has been studying the moral and theological implications of cloning took a sharply different tack from that of Clinton and the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. While it too voiced concern about possible harm that could result from cloning, for the UCC panel one of the central ethical issues raised by the specter of cloning involved justice--and the possibility that the techniques would be used principally by the rich and privileged. In particular, the panel opposed the use of cloning for reproductive purposes.

"When the world groans with hunger, when children are stunted from chronic malnutrition, when people die of famine by the thousands every day . . . the development of any more technologies to suit the desires of those who are relatively privileged, secure and comfortable seems to fly in the face of fundamental claims of justice," the panel said in a four-page statement released June 10.

At the same time, the panel indicated that it did not "object categorically" to human "pre-embryo research, including that [which] produces and studies cloned human pre-embryos through the 14th day of fetal development, provided the research is well justified in terms of its objectives." The panel also declared that continued cloning research on animals is "morally and theologically permissible" provided that "animals be treated humanely and that needless suffering is avoided." The UCC panel was appointed by the denomination's Board for Homeland Ministries, and its conclusions do not constitute an official position of the 1.5-million-member denomination.