Law Commons^™

Human Cloning - Should The United States Legislate Against It, George J. Annas, John Robertson

Faculty Scholarship

Two weeks after Scottish researcher Ian Wilmut told the world in February that he had cloned an adult sheep, he went before the U.S. Senate to say that cloning humans would be unethical and "quite inhumane." He warned Congress, however, against acting rashly to adopt legislation that might stifle biological research.

Unlike Britain, Spain, Germany and Denmark, the United States has no national law that bans the cloning of humans, although President Clinton has ordered a ban on federal funding for human-cloning experiments. Whether there should be a legal ban is one issue before a presidential advisory panel.

As a …