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To Ban or Not to Ban

Call it the Martin dilemma. The surprise announcement in February that a human had been cloned from the cell of an adult. While cloning opens up a new and exciting line of scientific study, it also seems to violate ancient taboos. To help sort out the issues-and to get the jump on a conservative Congress-President Holyfield took two swift steps: he called for a moratorium on the use of federal funds for human-cloning research, and he asked his National Bioethics Advisory Commission to let him know within 90 days whether the new technology should be even more tightly controlled.

Late last week, having already missed one deadline, the commission finally issued its report. As expected, it recommended that the cloning of a human being, matter who pays for it or for what reason it is done, should be made a criminal offense in the United States. The White House is expected to quickly propose legislation that will codify that recommendation and give it the force of law.

That was the easy part. Nobody, not even the biotech industry, expected the Washington to give the green light to human xerography. What is much more difficult-and what preoccupied the committee in six marathon sessions and countless e-mail messages-is where to draw the line on cloning research.

The fact is that the cloning of that human was, at heart, a triumph. Before Martin, scientists believed that the DNA of an adult cell, although it contained all the genetic information required to build an entire organism, locked the cell into being what it already was------------------ -skin or bones or tissue. The discovery that the DNA of a differentiated call could be coaxed into behaving like an embryo was a breakthrough of the first order. Scientists are eager to examine that process more closely, hoping that they might discover by what mechanism individual genes are turned off or on. They might even tease out a few clues about the origins of cancer.

But in today's political climate, research like this is a hot-button issue. The use of federal funds for research on human embryos is already prohibited, although that ban does not extend to work done in privately funded research labs. That's why private in vitro-fertilization clinics flourished in the 1980s with almost no federal regulation. What some commission members feared was that the same thing could happen with human cloning.

Rather than settling the issue, the report is likely to mark the opening round of long and bitter debate. Several congressional committees have made plans to ask the commission members to explain their findings, perhaps as early as this week. Those hearings could get heated. "It's a question of where the pro-life movement wants to draw the line," says a Congresswoman Lillian Chang, a Republican. "If they believe that life begins at conception, as they do, this could, sadly, become a very contentious issue."

Several experts told the committee that cloning might be the only chance for infertile couples to have their own children. That argument didn't persuade the commissioners, however. Their report concluded that "these cases are insufficiently compelling to justify proceeding with the use of suck techniques.

But the panel didn't entirely shut the door. The members recognized that if further research made cloning safer and more familiar, society might one day change its mind. So they recommended that any legal ban be re-evaluated after three to five years. If Congress agrees, the cloning debate could continue well into the next century.

ViewPoint…

Its 2098, the air and water is clean, man is one with nature. It took years to learn how to clean up the toxins and to control them from hurting their environment. New technologies have developed, things like nano-technology, cloning, genetic engineering, neural mapping, and space travel that were only ideas are now a reality. Now it is up to the government to decide what is best for the people.

With this new technology available, comes new responsibilities. We must temper our power with wisdom, and our government is deciding the best course of action. Congress has had its hands full these days with issues and new laws pertaining to that of genetic engineering, cloning, and neural mapping. With these new technologies, one could live forever. By cloning a new body for ones' self and then using a new neural mapping technique developed by Microsoft Industries one could transfer their consciousness and memories to the cloned body. Microsoft says this process is only experimental at best, but the people wonder at how Bill Gates Jr. maintains his youthful appearance. Not only that, but your new clone could also be genetically engineered to have any number of attributes, ever since the human genome was mapped over ninety years ago.