AS CONGRESS prepares to wrap up its legislative year and race home to fight for re-election, one item is glaringly absent: a law making it a crime to make a cloned human.
Ask any member of Congress whether they would support such a law, and the answer would be a resounding yes. The trouble is many feel that a ban on reproductive cloning doesn鈥檛 go far enough. They want to ban all cloning, whether it鈥檚 to make a baby or to make stem cells. A partial ban, they argue, would leave the door ajar for unscrupulous scientists to transfer a cloned embryo that was intended for research into a woman鈥檚 uterus. And even if transfer weren鈥檛 on the agenda, people shouldn鈥檛 be creating embryos for research, say the anti-cloners.
So that leaves the US in the strange position of being one of the few countries in the civilised world with no ban on cloning. And apparently, we want to keep it that way. US officials have gone on record as opposing a UN sponsored initiative that would ban reproductive cloning, again because it does not include a ban on cloning for stem cells.
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With a war on Iraq imminent, and the stock market falling like a brick, public concern over cloning is not at an all-time high. But it鈥檚 a wonderful testament to democracy to realise that something everyone agrees on has virtually no hope of becoming law.
But while federal legislators are paralysed over the cloning issue, state legislators in California marched in with plans of their own. According to a new law, people are welcome to derive stem cells, or even try therapeutic cloning, within California鈥檚 boundaries. Although this move won widespread approval from scientists and other supporters of stem cell research, the California statute is largely symbolic: there may not be a federal law prohibiting anyone from deriving stem cells or attempting therapeutic cloning, but you still can鈥檛 do it with federal funds. And if the feds do pass a law banning cloning, it will trump any state law. So California鈥檚 gesture was more political than practical.
THIS month a member of the House science panel rallied NASA to get involved in the national effort, noting that 鈥淣ASA鈥檚 Mission Statement says that part of its mission is 鈥樷�o protect our home planet.鈥� I hope NASA will heed the message of today鈥檚 hearing and work with other agencies of the US government to craft a timely, cost-effective plan鈥e cannot afford to be complacent.鈥� Another member of the committee chimed in, 鈥淚t鈥檚 only a matter of time before we are faced with an event unparalleled in human history.鈥�
It wasn鈥檛 terrorists or Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that was exercising the congressmen. It was asteroids. The committee is knee-deep in debate over a proposed law to increase funding to detect asteroids that might hit the Earth. NASA is only about halfway through cataloguing large, dangerous objects traversing the Solar System. The military is worried, as last year an asteroid entered the atmosphere and exploded over the Mediterranean with such a burst of energy that sky-watchers at the Pentagon feared it might have been a nuclear bomb. As the House committee chairman warned: 鈥淓arth is playing cosmic roulette with asteroids.鈥� Nowadays, one just can鈥檛 be too careful.
