AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION URGES VOLUNTARY MORATORIUM

February 13, 1998

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The American Medical Association Thursday called for a voluntary five-year moratorium on human cloning, rather than the outright ban President Clinton has backed.

The board of trustees of the largest U.S. doctors' group said it supports research that is important to human health. It urged Congress not to interfere with current human, animal or cellular cloning research that is not directly aimed at producing a human being.

"This decision comes as a consequence of the board's belief that the scientific and ethical issues dealing with human cloning require careful and deliberate consideration," Thomas Reardon, chairman of the board, said in a written statement.

"We stand with our many other research colleagues who urge a voluntary ban so as to permit the opportunity for careful and reasoned protections to be developed while not adversely affecting important research and medical interventions," he added.

Differences have emerged in Congress over how to word the legislation and how it should extend. This has slowed progress and made the outlook for the legislation uncertain.

Reardon said research aimed at producing a human clone is not ethical but "legislative or regulatory protections require careful and reasoned consideration so as not to jeopardize legitimate research necessary to the enhancement of the health or our patients."

Clinton urged Congress to ban human cloning after Chicago physicist Richard Seed's announcement in January that he wanted to start a cloning clinic.