Cloning hearing highlights science worries

Physician researchers fear that some groups' vows to clone humans will spur legislation that could endanger legitimate cell- and tissue-cloning science.

By Vida Foubister, AMNews staff. April 16, 2001.

A congressional hearing on human cloning that featured an international consortium of scientists and a religious sect who say they are close to developing this technology ended up being somewhat of a "circus," said one physician who testified.

"The two groups that were there advocating reproductive cloning were just not credible," said Thomas B. Okarma, MD, PhD, president and CEO, Geron Corp., Menlo Park, Calif.

Much of the debate focused on the premature state of the science in animals and the consequences of applying this to humans. Ethicists, for the most part, shared the view that human cloning is a technology whose time has not yet come.

"To date, a collection of kooks, cranks, cultists and con men have been the sole members of the club announcing that cloning will soon be used to make a human," Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics, said in his testimony.

But the mere fact that these groups have announced their intent to clone humans, and that it is theoretically plausible for them to proceed, is expected to trigger legislation. President Bush has said he would sign a law banning such research.

Panos Michael Zavos, PhD, professor emeritus of reproductive physiology-andrology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, represented the international scientists consortium at the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations subcommittee hearing March 28.

He said his group, which is not conducting research in the United States, expects to successfully clone a human within 20 months. But he emphasized that "the consortium will not step on dead bodies or deformed babies to get this accomplished." [...]