Health Care Issues

Legal Status Of Human Cloning

Experts say that if scientists were to attempt today to clone a human being, there would probably be no legal barriers. Despite several bills in Congress and assertion of authority by the FDA over cloning, the controversy is still in the debate stage.

  • The FDA's claim is suspect because it has not invoked authority for other, similarly novel fertility treatments.

  • President Clinton has banned the use of federal dollars for human cloning research and asked the National Bioethics Advisory to examine the issue.

  • The commission recommended passing a federal law banning the cloning of humans, and Clinton last July submitted the Cloning Prohibition Act of 1977 -- but that bill and a handful of others have either failed outright or sit languishing in committees.

Experts say that if cloned cells are considered "medical products," cloning could come under the FDA's purview, but not if they are considered simply a new variant of fertility treatment. "The FDA is not supposed to regulate the practice of medicine," says Richard Merrill, a professor at the University of Virginia Law School.

As for ethical factors, Merrill says that the agency "is not equipped, either by law or personnel, to grapple with some of the wider social issues involved."

The extent of FDA authority also rests on a technical factor -- the amount of cellular manipulation involved in cloning. The FDA does not always demand prior approval for research on cells that will only be "minimally manipulated," but it might be able to step in if cells are deemed to be "more than minimally manipulated." Some FDA officials claim that cloning involves high manipulation of cells, but a number of legal experts and bioethicists dispute that.

The argument is also raised that if a woman decided to clone herself using her own eggs, who would have the authority to stop the process?

Anti-cloning bills have been introduced in more than 30 state legislatures. But with cloning techniques evolving so fast, many of the proposed laws are so riddled with loopholes they would not ban cloning at all.

Source: Caroline Daniel, "Conflicting Aims Leave Ban on Human Cloning in Limbo," Washington Post, July 26, 1998.

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