BIOETHICS ADVISORY COMMISSION MULLS CLONING DEFINITION

November 29, 1998

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When scientists stick the nucleus from a human cell into a hollowed-out cow's egg, is the result a cow or a human? Is it a clone? Could it grow into a baby?

President Clinton's advisers on such matters, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, have been forced into a hasty consideration of such questions. They say it is not clear if the experiments by scientists at Massachusetts-based biotech company Advanced Cell Technology constitute the cloning of a human being.

But if they do, they should be banned, the commission's chair, Dr. Harold Shapiro, said in a letter to Clinton released last weekend.