What could have inspired the draconian anticloning laws discussed in Chapter 6? This chapter documents the influence of the five objections on federal and state legislators and regulators.

Federal Law

I begin with federal law. As explained in Chapter 6, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims that it has the authority to stop human reproductive cloning in the United States. Human reproductive cloning also faces strong opposition in both houses of Congress. Efforts to ban human reproductive cloning have foundered to date, but only because the House and Senate cannot agree on whether the ban should include research cloning.

Why have regulators and legislators opposed human reproductive cloning?

When Dr. Zoon testified before Congress in 2001, she admitted that the FDA could regulate human reproductive cloning only on safety grounds. However, she added that the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) had issued a report identifying social and ethical problems with reproductive cloning. She added that the FDA unequivocally opposed reproductive cloning.

Similarly, when advocating the enactment of anticloning laws, members of Congress frequently have cited the 1997 NBAC report and the 2002 reports of the National Academies and President's Council on Bioethics. Thus, these three reports should help to explain why regulators and legislators have opposed human cloning.

The NBAC argued that cloning should temporarily be banned for 3 to 5 years – in large part on safety grounds but also because the NBAC had identified other serious ethical concerns that deserved further public deliberation.