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President's Council on Bioethics proposes moratorium on research cloning
"Cloning edict angers both sides," says a San Francisco Chronicle headline today. The President's Council on Bioethics yesterday recommended a total ban on reproductive human cloning, but only a four-year moratorium on so-called therapeutic cloning, or cloning embryos for research purposes.

"By permanently banning cloning-to-produce-children, this policy gives force to the strong ethical verdict against cloning-to-produce-children, unanimous in this Council (and in Congress) and widely supported by the American people," said the ten-person majority of the 17-member council. "And by enacting a four-year moratorium on the creation of cloned embryos, it establishes an additional safeguard not afforded by policies that would allow the production of cloned embryos to proceed without delay." (The full report, including an 11-page executive summary, is available at the council's website.)

A seven-member minority doesn't want the moratorium. "The research shows great promise, and its actual value can only be determined by allowing it to go forward now," they said. "Regardless of how much time we allow it, no amount of experimentation with animal models can provide the needed understanding of human diseases."

President Bush, however, doesn't want a moratorium either—he wants an all-out ban on all forms of human cloning. "His position is based on principle," House spokesman Scott McClellan told The Washington Times. "Any attempt to clone a human being is morally wrong." A White House statement called for the Senate to "take action this year to ban all human cloning. As the Council's majority recommendation makes clear, no law should be enacted this year that authorizes any human cloning."

Conservative Christian groups were upset that the council didn't call for a total ban. "Hopefully, this report will serve as a speed bump to slow down the apparent rush to 'clone and kill' human embryos for their stem cells," said Carrie Gordon Earll, bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family. "The recommended moratorium is only a stopgap measure and does not guarantee that human embryos created by cloning will be protected. … It's disconcerting to realize that learned, intelligent individuals, like these council members, fail to understand the simple biological fact that all cloning is reproductive and creates a new human life. It is deceptive to create separate categories of human cloning based on what scientists intend to do with the embryo."

Concerned Women for America president Sandy Rios similarly argued that the act of human cloning—not the reason for the process—makes it immoral. "This decision leaves the American people vulnerable; a moratorium on a dangerous act is not enough," she said.

Family Research Council president Ken Connor praised the work of council members who worked for a total ban on human cloning, and he could at least muster one cheer: "In an environment where that which is not prohibited is permitted, a temporary moratorium on human cloning is better than no ban at all," he said. "However … in the final analysis, it's lamentable that a majority of this commission, with all of its intellectual horsepower, was unable to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil."

It all depends on your perspective
It's fun to see how it Church of England's change in its teachings of divorce and remarriage got spun in the papers. All of these headlines cover essentially the same story:

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July (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46