U.S. REPUBLICANS SEEK TOTAL REPRODUCTIVE CLONING BAN

February 4, 1998

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- U.S. Republican senators offered legislation Tuesday that would ban the cloning of human beings permanently, including laboratory research on human embryos created by the cloning process.

Republicans said their bill applied only to human cloning practices and was worded in narrow language to allow important research on an array of diseases from diabetes to muscular dystrophy, and studies of animal and plant cells.

"We are balancing the needs of ethics and morality. This bill allows the cloning of Dolly, but not Dolly Parton," said Sen. Judd Gregg, Republican of New Hampshire. Dolly the sheep was the first mammal successfully cloned from an adult cell, by Scottish scientists in 1997.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts proposed Monday their own version of a human cloning ban. The Democratic bill would allow research up to the point of transferring cloned cells to a woman's uterus, which is unacceptable under the Republican plan.

"The critical difference between the bills is that their bill has too many loopholes. Our bill would not allow rogue ceintists to create human embryos, that make it far too easy to take out of the country and implant somewhere else," Bond said.