Clone wars.

AuthorEibert, Mark D.

The forces of government gather in fear of hypothetical clones

"There are some avenues that should be off limits to science. If scientists will not draw the line for themselves, it is up to the elected representatives of the people to draw it for them."

Thus declared Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Mo.) one of the sponsors of S. 1601, the official Republican bill to outlaw human cloning. The bill would impose a 10-year prison sentence on anyone who uses "human somatic cell nuclear transfer technology" to produce an embryo, even if only to study cloning in the laboratory. If enacted into law, the bill would effectively ban all research into the potential benefits of human cloning. Scientists who use the technology for any reason - and infertile women who use it to have children - would go to jail.

Not to be outdone, Democrats have come up with a competing bill. Sens. Ted Kennedy (Mass.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) have proposed S. 1602, which would ban human cloning for at least 10 years. It would allow scientists to conduct limited experiments with cloning in the laboratory, provided any human embryos are destroyed at an early stage rather than implanted into a woman's uterus and allowed to be born.

If the experiment goes too far, the Kennedy-Feinstein bill would impose a $1 million fine and government confiscation of all property, real or personal, used in or derived from the experiment. The same penalties that apply to scientists appear to apply to new parents who might use the technology to have babies.

The near unanimity on Capitol Hill about the need to ban human cloning makes it likely that some sort of bill will be voted on this session and that it will seriously restrict scientists' ability to study human cloning. In the meantime, federal bureaucrats have leapt into the breach. In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it planned to "regulate" (that is, prohibit) human cloning. In the past, the FDA has largely ignored the fertility industry, making no effort to regulate in vitro fertilization, methods for injecting sperm into eggs, and other advanced reproductive technologies that have much in common with cloning techniques.

An FDA spokesperson told me that although Congress never expressly granted the agency jurisdiction over cloning, the FDA can regulate it under its statutory authority over biological products (like vaccines or blood used in transfusions) and drugs. But even Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), one of the most outspoken congressional opponents of cloning, admits that "it's hard to argue that a cloning procedure is a drug." Of course, even if Congress had granted the FDA explicit authority to regulate cloning, such authority would only be valid if Congress had the constitutional power to regulate reproduction - which is itself a highly questionable assumption (more on that later).

Nor have state legislatures been standing still. Effective January 1, California became the first state to outlaw human cloning. California's law defines "cloning" so broadly and inaccurately - as creating children by the transfer of nuclei from any type of cell to enucleated eggs - that it also bans a promising new infertility treatment that has nothing to do with cloning. In that new procedure, doctors transfer nuclei from older, dysfunctional eggs (not differentiated adult cells as in cloning) to young, healthy donor eggs, and then inseminate the eggs with the husband's sperm - thus conceiving...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT