Bookmarkers beware: Bookmarks to pages other than the home page may not work after we change our server in April Editor's Choice | This Week in BMJ | Press releases BMJ No 7131 Volume 316 News Saturday 21 February 1998 Jacqui Wise reports from the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Philadelphia Bills on human cloning are full of loopholes Laws currently being drafted in the United States to prevent human cloning will not be adequate and are full of loopholes, a legal expert has warned. Seven proposed bills are pending in Congress, and state bans on human cloning are under consideration in 20 states. Lori Andrews, a teacher of reproductive law at Chicago-Kent School of Law, told the meeting: "Many of these laws suffer from drafting infirmities." For example, seven of the states create a loophole by prohibiting only the creation of a genetically identical individual through cloning. But since a donated egg is used to create the clone, the resulting individual will have some mitochondrial DNA from the egg donor and not be identical to the original donor. Ms Andrews warned that such laws might not cover the cloning of a headless individual to serve as a donor of organs, as it could be argued that such an entity should not be considered an individual or person. Other laws may be too specific - for example, seven states prohibit the transfer of somatic cell nucleic material only into a human egg. Such laws could be circumvented by using bovine ova. In his address to the conference US President Bill Clinton said that he had been disturbed when he heard that a member of the scientific community was planning to carry out human cloning experiments. "The extraordinary promise of science and technology also carries extraordinary responsibilities," he said. But last week a bill to ban human cloning was shelved in the Senate because of differences over what constitutes a human life that is entitled to legal protection. Opponents of the bill, who include many groups in the scientific community, say that it goes too far in restricting vital research. Home | Current issue | Past issues | Classified ads | Career Focus | Feedback Collections | About this site | About the BMJ | BMA | Medline