TEXT D When a Scottish research
team startled the world by revealing 3 months ago that it had cloned an adult
sheep, President Clinton moved swiftly. Declaring that he was opposed to using
this unusual animal husbandry technique to clone humans, he ordered that federal
funds not be used for such an experiment, although no one had proposed to do so,
and asked an independent panel of experts chaired by Princeton President Harold
Shapiro to report back to the White House in 90 days with recommendations for a
national policy on human cloning. That group -- the National Bioethics Advisory
Commission (NBAC) has been working feverishly to put its wisdom on paper, and at
a meeting on 17 May, members agreed on a near-final draft of their
recommendations. NBAC will ask that Clinton’s 90-day ban on
federal funds for human cloning be extended indefinitely, and possibly that it
be made a law. But NBAC members are planning to word the recommendation narrowly
to avoid new restrictions on research that involves the cloning of human DNA or
cells-routine in molecular biology. The panel has not yet reached agreement on a
crucial question, however, whether to recommend legislation that would make it a
crime for private fun ding to be used for human cloning. In a
draft preface to the recommendations, discussed at the 17 May meeting. Shapiro
suggested that the panel had found a broad consensus that it would be "morally
unacceptable to attempt to create a human child by adult nuclear cloning.
"Shapiro explained during the meeting, that the moral doubt stems mainly from
fears about the risk to the health of the child. The panel then informally
accepted several general conclusions, although some details have not been
settled. NBAC plans to call for a continued ban on federal
government funding for any attempt to clone body cell nuclear to create a child.
Because current federal law already forbids the use of federal funds to create
embryos (the earliest stage of human offspring before birth) for research or to
knowingly endanger an embryo’s life, NBAC will remain silent on embryo
research. NBAC members also indicated that they will appeal to
privately funded researchers and clinics not to try to clone humans by body cell
nuclear transfer. But they were divided on whether to go further by calling for
a federal law that would impose a complete ban on human cloning. Shapiro and
most members favored an appeal for such legislation, but in a phone interview,
he said this is sue was still "up in the air". It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ______.
A.some NBAC members hesitate to ban human cloning completely B.a law banning human cloning is to be passed in no time C.privately funded researchers will respond positively to NBAC’s appeal D.the issue of human cloning will soon be settled