State funding for human cloning banned in Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law a bill banning state funding of all human cloning, his office announced June 26.

The measure not only bars human cloning to produce a live birth, typically referred to as reproductive cloning, but also cloning to produce an embryo for experimentation, known as research (or therapeutic) cloning. In the latter, stem cells are extracted typically from a five- or six-day-old embryo, which results in the destruction of the tiny human being.

Stem cells are the body’s master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, giving hope for the development of cures for a variety of diseases and other ailments. While embryonic stem cells have failed to produce treatments in human beings, stem cells from nonembryonic sources have produced treatments for at least 73 human ailments, according to Do No Harm, a coalition promoting ethics in research.