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John A. Robertson*
Introduction
The announcement in February 1997 of the birth of Dolly, the sheep cloned from the mammary cells of an adult ewe, was a turning point in ethical and social debates over the use of assisted reproductive technologies. Prior to Dolly, ethical and legal debate focused on the creation and discard of human embryos and on the kinship effects of gamete donation and surrogacy.' The birth of Dolly has now shifted the focus of debate to issues of selection and engineering of offspring traits. With rapid advances in knowledge of the human genome and the ability to manipulate genes forthcoming, these issues will occupy debate for some time to come.
The prospect that human cloning might soon follow Dolly brought forth an immediate political reaction. President Clinton declared a ban on the use of federal funds for human cloning research, called for a private sector moratorium on cloning, and asked the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) to report in ninety days its recommendations for public policy regarding cloning.2 Bills banning human cloning or cloning research were introduced in Congress and in several states.3 In early June, the NBAC recommended enactment of a federal criminal law that banned human cloning for up to five years,4 and President Clinton promptly submitted the request to Congress.5 Several foreign countries and national or international advisory bodies also called for a prohibition on human cloning.6
Opposing human cloning at this early stage of its development is easy. Nuclear transfer from adult somatic cells has not yet been replicated in other species, much less humans, and initial impressions are that human cloning, if not simply bizarre or hubristic, serves few pressing needs. If the safety and efficacy of cloning are established, however, a persuasive case can be made for its use as a technique to assist infertile or genetically at-risk couples to have healthy children or to procure tissue or organs for transplant. As such, utilization of cloning technology would appear to be part of one's fundamental right to have and rear children.' The key ethical, legal, and policy question then posed is whether the use of cloning to achieve these goals presents such special risks or problems that prohibition or close regulation is justified.
Answering this question,...