CLINTON PROPOSES CLONING BAN

June 9, 1997

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Aiming to preserve "the miracle of human life," President Clinton offered legislation Monday to ban human cloning but permit research and encourage debate over a perplexing moral and scientific issue.

His proposal is based on the weekend recommendation of the National Bioethics Commission.

"These are all exceedingly difficult issues," panel chairman Harold Shapiro told Clinton in the Rose Garden ceremony. "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."

Clinton's bill would not go as far as some critics had hoped. It would allow cloning of genes and animals that make advances in medicine and agriculture. But he drew the line on developing humans.

"It has the potential to threaten the sacred family bonds at the very core of our ideals," the president said.

"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," the president said. "It will ensure that we do not fall prey to the temptation to replicate ourselves at the expense of those beliefs."

Clinton promised again to ban federal spending and urged the private sector to follow suit. The president first took those steps after a sheep was cloned in March.

Some in Congress see the president's proposal as something of a cop-out. Although the position was applauded by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, Sen. Christopher Bond (Republican, Missouri), a cloning foe, said the commission took a less-than-heroic stance.

"I had hoped that the federal commission would not be afraid to make a strong moral statement that human cloning is wrong, period," Bond said in a statement. "But when it came to the tough questions, they punted, and now it will be up to Congress and state legislatures to resolve these issues."

Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, R-Michigan, plans to introduce legislation that he said will put some backbone into the federal position on cloning.

His bill would forbid human cloning and human embryo research related to cloning, a much stronger stance than the position of the commission.

"I think it would be well-received" among other lawmakers, Ehlers said, promising hearings soon.

The commission called for a ban on cloning aimed at reproducing a human being, but would not bar laboratory cloning research that stops short of producing a baby.

The panel spent much of its time examining and discussing ethical considerations but, as one member said, "hung our hat" on the safety issue.

Commission members saw a great a risk of horribly deformed and suffering babies if scientists tried to apply to humans the Scottish technique that produced a sheep named Dolly, the first mammal cloned from the cell of an adult animal.

In hearings over three months, the commissioners reminded each other repeatedly that Dolly was born healthy and normal only after the Scottish scientist had 277 failures, including some lambs with severe and lethal birth defects.

But the commissioners also visualized the possibility of medical benefits from cloning research, including such things as growing new tissue and learning how quiet genes can be awakened to correct or prevent disease. Such research, including the creation of human embryos, could continue without the risk of deformed babies if the embryos are never implanted in a woman's womb.