A divided President’s Council on Bioethics has stopped short of recommending a comprehensive ban on human cloning, instead calling for a four-year moratorium on cloning for research pruposis. The 18-member panel named early this year by President Bush barely managed a majority for a moratorium on research cloning in its July 11 report. Ten members agreed with the call for a moratorium, while seven others issued a ,inority report recommending the regulated use of cloned embryos for research. One member abstained. All of the council agreed in recommending a ban on cloning for the purpose of producing children.
The council called such cloning not only unsafe but morally unacceptable. “The report is not what those of us who want a total ban on cloning would have hoped for, but it’s the best we could expect given the composition of the council,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “Anyone knowledgeable about the background of the council members would have predicted a majority in support of the president’s view but not an overwhelming majority.”
The call for a moratorium on research cloning did not satisfy proponents of such experimentation either. The recommendation “is a blow to Americans fighting life-threatening medical conditions, because a moratorium has the same effect as a ban on life-saving research,” said Michael Manganiello, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research.
(BP)
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