Two panels consider cloning

A panel of the US National Academy of Sciences, set up by Congress to advise the US government, has reported its findings on human cloning.

The report recommended that human reproductive cloning should be banned because of a potentially high risk of injury, disease or death to the clones and to the women who carry them, but said that medical research involving cloned human embryos should be allowed to take place.

The report was based on scientific issues only, not moral or ethical ones. The panel based the recommendation on experiences with animal cloning, where many clones have died prematurely or become ill. Its report said that cloning babies would therefore be 'dangerous and likely to fail'.

The report is timely, coming a week before a Senate committee will consider several bills aimed at restricting human cloning to varying degrees. Some bills intend to make all forms of human cloning illegal, while others would allow cloning for scientific and medical research to take place, but would not allow cloning for reproduction. A full Senate debate is expected in March.

Meanwhile, another panel, the President's Council on Bioethics, has been looking at the ethical and moral issues that surround human cloning. The first meeting of the council ended this week with no recommendations being made. Chairman Leon Kass, of the University of Chicago, said that he believed this was good, as it showed the council was not trying to achieve a hasty consensus and that the group might develop a 'better way of doing bioethics' than previous committees.