US President Bush pressed the Senate on Wednesday to ban cloning of human embryos for research, saying science must not rush ahead ``without an ethical compass.'' Senators promised a fight, seeing great promise in cloning for cures of terrible afflictions.
Bush called medical researchers, ethicists, lawmakers, ministers and disabled people to the White House to explain why he objects to human cloning and to embrace a ban proposed by Sens. Sam Brownback and Mary Landrieu.
``We can pursue medical research with a clear sense of moral purpose, or we can travel without an ethical compass into a world we could live to regret,'' Bush said. ``How we answer the question of human cloning will place us on one path or the other.''
Bush was looking to tamp down an evolving Senate compromise, crafted by Sens. Arlen Specter, Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin and Dianne Feinstein, that would outlaw cloning for reproductive purposes but allow it for research on illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.
``It would be a mistake for the US Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber,'' Bush said.
At issue is the production of embryos that are genetically identical to a donor human being. Bush voiced his opposition frequently last year, and in August he restricted federally financed stem cell research to 64 existing stem cell lines taken from embryos discarded by fertility clinics.
The House passed a ban on all human cloning last July but the Senate has not acted on it. Many senators object to the idea of cloning humans, but are not averse to embryo research that could cure disease.
Bush called the prospects of successful research from clones ``highly speculative,'' and said he fears nightmare scenarios in which embryos are created so they can be plundered for body parts, so that parents can have custom-ordered children, or so that women's eggs can be sold at high prices. He also said research had suggested that ``designer cells'' taken from cloned embryos might be rejected by human bodies.
(Xinhua News Agency April 11, 2002)
