amBushed on cloning

The Bush administration's first big decision on a bioethics issue, to support a complete ban on both public and private sector research involving human somatic cell nuclear transfer, is matched by a groundswell of support in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Senate ultimately may block the move, but the White House caught industry, patient groups and the science community off guard as they looked for the administration to come down with its decision on embryonic stem cell research.

The proposed ban would preclude the advancement of therapeutic cloning, which involves the use of somatic cell nuclear transfer to create cells that researchers hope to use in degenerative diseases. Although the approach would create an embryo that theoretically could be brought to term, so-called reproductive cloning, the therapeutic application would harvest the cells after a few days...