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Washington DC

DOLLY the sheep has spurred the US Congress into action. Legislators
moved quickly last week to introduce bills banning human cloning. But scientists
warned that hasty legislation could harm research, and urged Congress to wait
until an expert ethical panel has examined the question.

鈥淟egislation should be crafted only after there has been time to give it
deliberate thought,鈥� Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of
Health, told the ethics subcommittee of the House of Representatives Science
Committee. 鈥淗uman cloning is not going to happen overnight.鈥�

Vernon Ehlers, a Republican member of the House of Representatives from
Michigan, is introducing two bills to regulate cloning. One would make permanent
President Bill Clinton鈥檚 temporary ban on federal funding of research into human
cloning. The other would make it a criminal offence to clone a human being.

Ehlers believes Congress needs to take quick action to prevent a public
backlash against all techniques that involve genetic manipulation. Introducing
the bills 鈥渕ay seem like an unusual thing for a scientist to do鈥�, says Ehlers,
who is a physicist by training. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 important for us to prevent
experimentation with human cloning. If we don鈥檛, we鈥檙e likely to see a limit on
cloning in general.鈥�

Varmus agrees that the cloning of a human being is 鈥渙ffensive鈥�. But he says
regulations have to drawn carefully. Varmus is worried that research aimed at
culturing human tissue, and perhaps one day growing entire organs, might be
harmed by sloppily worded legislation.

Thomas Murray, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University in
Cleveland, Ohio, who serves on the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, wants
Congress to postpone action until his committee has had a chance to issue the
report on the ethics of cloning that Clinton has asked it to prepare within 90
days.