Cloning Proposal Draws Criticism

A proposal to allow lab experiments on human cloning but forbid the actual replication of a person drew immediate outcries Wednesday from anti-abortion groups, who say that would permit “grave evils.”

However, the partial-cloning recommendation from a federal advisory panel brought praise from biotechnology groups, who say it would allow valuable research while essentially calling a timeout on efforts to actually make cloned humans.

The panel, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, meets Saturday to draw up final recommendations for President Clinton on the stance the federal government should take on human cloning.

The group’s position means that research could continue on the “Dolly technique,” the panel member said - research in which a human embryo is made from the nucleus of a mature cell joined in a lab dish with a human egg without its nucleus. However, such embryos could not then be placed into a woman’s womb for development into a baby.

Such a recommendation by the commission permits “two separate grave evils,” said John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe, director of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission, a part of the American Life League Inc. anti-abortion group.

The first, he said, was the creation in a lab of a cloned human embryo; the second was to prohibit implantation and development of the embryo, which eventually would be killed.