US cloning news

US lawmakers have resumed efforts to ban human cloning. Supporters of a ban on all forms of human cloning have re-introduced legislation that was passed last year in Congress but was stalled in the Senate. Opponents of the full ban have urged that only reproductive cloning be prohibited, but cloning should be allowed in order to derive stem cells for medical research. Senators Diane Feinstein and Arlen Specter are expected to introduce competing legislation next week

Leon Kass,chairman of the President's Council of Bioethics said that the fact the US has not yet banned reproductive cloning needs rectifying, adding 'opposition to human cloning to produce children is practically unanimous in America; the vast majority of our fellow citizens, including most scientists, would like to see it banned'. In his State of the Union address last week, President Bush called for a ban on all human cloning, saying 'because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity and pass a law against all human cloning'.

Meanwhile, Brigitte Boisselier, scientific director of Clonaid, the group which has claimed to have produced three human clone babies, has testified under oath that 'Eve', the first supposed clone, is in Israel. She made the disclosure during a Florida hearing into whether a court guardian should be appointed for the child. After her testimony, Judge John Frusciante ruled that he had no jurisdiction over a child that does not live in the country and whose parents do not live in the state. The case collapsed.