The American Bar Association yesterday, "go[ing] against the Bush administration," adopted a policy supporting human therapeutic cloning and opposing any government ban on such research, the Washington Times reports. The ABA's House of Delegates, which makes policy decisions for the group's 408,000 member lawyers, indicated support for the policy by voice vote during their annual conference in Washington, D.C. The policy, which also opposes legislation that would penalize scientists who engage in therapeutic cloning, states, "Governmental action that would ban all forms of cloning, and thereby foreclose all potential avenues of medical advancement offered by therapeutic cloning, poses a direct and serious threat to freedom of scientific inquiry." According to policy author Robyn Shapiro, director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the policy supports only cloning research that is "conducted with proper legal, ethical and research safeguards," and it "explicitly" does not support human reproductive cloning.

Effect on Senate Debate
A spokesperson for Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who introduced legislation (S 2439) earlier this year that would allow human cloning for research purposes, said that the ABA's adoption of the policy indicates a "growing support" for therapeutic cloning throughout the country. However, opponents of such research said the ABA's position would make "little difference" to federal lawmakers, according to the Times (Fagan, Washington Times, 8/14). President Bush has voiced his support for a permanent ban on all forms of human cloning, and the House last year voted to enact such a ban. Shapiro said that the ABA proposal was "born of fear" that the Senate might pass a similar bill (S 1899) that would ban all forms of human cloning. Although such legislation is currently stalled in Congress, ABA members said that speaking out in favor of therapeutic cloning now would allow the ABA to lobby lawmakers, testify on Capitol Hill and publish its position on the issue if the cloning bills are "revived" when Congress returns from its August recess (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 8/12). ABA legal expert Zona Hostetler stated that a U.S. ban on all cloning research would "drive the research to other countries or underground, 'most likely without regulation or review'" (Reuters Health, 8/13).