Shortly after the world learned last month of Dolly, the cloned sheep, President Clinton banned any efforts to clone humans with federally funded research and asked privately-funded scientists to abide by a voluntary moratorium pending a 90-day review of the issues by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.
Harold Shapiro, president of Princeton University and chairman of the panel, said cloning posed ethical questions unlike those of past scientific breakthroughs because it dealt with such basic questions about the creation of life.
Shapiro told reporters the panel will try to face up to the hard issues in the next 90 days, but he said this may be a topic that society revisits over and over in the years to come.
I think like all great moral issues there is no permanent consensus. Society can just reach a temporary resolution that seems to make sense in their times, for their feelings, he said.
What we're supposed to do is to try and think through as carefully as we can what the legal and ethical issues are, to help provide some advice to the president and the Congress about what actions, if any, the federal government or other branches should take, he added.
The meeting was briefly interrupted by four protesters from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, who objected to treating animals as test tubes with tails. One wore what appeared to be a bunny costume and another dressed as a sheep and carried a sign that said Cloning is Baaa-d.
Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress, and in several other countries around the world, have been contemplating whether or how to regulate human cloning research.
Many scientists and ethicists have urged them not to overreact, saying that while they opposed any attempt to replicate a human being they hoped a backlash would not lead to a ban on cloning-related cellular research that could give rise to treatments for genetic diseases or cancers.
Shapiro and the scientists, lawyers and ethicists on the panel noted that one task will be to define very clearly what they mean by cloning. Scientists use the term for procedures ranging from copying a single cell to splitting an embryo to -- in Dolly's case -- replicating an adult mammal.
Princeton biologist Shirley Tilghman summarized some other advances in genetics, which though less dramatic may answer some of the same scientific, agricultural and medical needs as cloning could. I think it (cloning) will have a role, but I predict in the end a modest role, Tilghman said.
The bioethics panel heard from four Protestant and Catholic theologians Thursday, and Jewish and Muslim experts will address them Friday. The theologians Thursday each approached human cloning from slightly difference perspectives but all voiced moral opposition.
In the cloning of humans there is an affront to human dignity, said the Rev. Albert Moraczewski of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The panel also has commissioned a series of papers from experts around the country that they will consider over the next three months. Shapiro said it would look at four related areas: the legal and regulatory framework for cloning-related and genetic research, the philosophical and ethical issues, the public policy options and the science of cloning.
source: newswire