Some people want to use cloning to produce live-born children who are "copies" of living or deceased people. Others would use it to mass-produce human embryos to be destroyed in medical research. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001 (S. 790, H.R. 2505) will ban human cloning for either purpose. The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed H.R. 2505. That measure or its Senate companion, S. 790, awaits a Senate vote. President Bush says he will sign the Act into law.
Human cloning is an effort to create humans as "copies" of other humans. It is done by taking genetic material from a person's body cell and injecting it into an egg, which is then stimulated to begin embryonic development. The cloned embryo is almost identical genetically to the person whose body cell was used.
Human cloning is wrong, because it dehumanizes human reproduction. All cloning treats human beings as products, as mere carriers of traits that others find useful. Cloning human embryos for research (so-called "therapeutic cloning") demeans life, by creating new human lives solely to destroy them. Cloning embryos for live birth (so-called "reproductive cloning") violates human dignity, robbing the child of a real mother and father and of his or her own personal destiny. Moreover, attempts at live birth will require the "trial and error" deaths of countless human embryos. Dolly the cloned sheep was born after 276 failed attempts. The few cloned humans who survive may suffer from devastating health problems.
Banning only so-called "reproductive" cloning (the live birth of human clones) is wrong, because it authorizes cloning to make embryos so they can be killed for experimentation. This is not a ban on cloning at all. It allows cloning, then requires all cloned humans to be killed at a certain stage. This approach is not even effective in preventing the birth of clones. Once cloned embryos are readily available in laboratories, they will easily be implanted in wombs; then the only way to enforce the ban will be to force women to undergo abortions.
A full ban on human cloning will not interfere with medical research, because cloning embryos for stem cell experimentation is increasingly recognized as a wasteful, unreliable and unnecessary path to medical research. The most beneficial stem cell research today uses stem cells from adult tissue, umbilical cords and other sources that involve no harm to human life. New cures for disease can be pursued without creating human lives in the laboratory solely to destroy them.
The effective and morally acceptable way to prevent human cloning is to forbid its use to make new humans in the first place. The Human Cloning Prohibitions Act of 2001 (S. 790, H.R. 2505) will achieve this important goal.
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