[Congressional Bills 107th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 1644 Introduced in House (IH)]
107th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 1644
To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit human cloning.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
April 26, 2001
Mr. Weldon of Florida (for himself and Mr. Stupak) introduced the
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary,
and in addition to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, for a period
to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the
committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
A BILL
To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit human cloning.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Human Cloning Prohibition Act of
2001''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds that--
(1) some individuals have announced that they will attempt
to clone human beings using the technique known as somatic cell
nuclear transfer already used with limited success in sheep and
other animals;
(2) nearly all scientists agree that such attempts pose a
massive risk of producing children who are stillborn,
unhealthy, or severely disabled, and considered opinion is
virtually unanimous that such attempts are therefore grossly
irresponsible and unethical;
(3) efforts to create human beings by cloning mark a new
and decisive step toward turning human reproduction into a
manufacturing process in which children are made in
laboratories to preordained specifications and, potentially, in
multiple copies;
(4) because it is an asexual form of reproduction, cloning
confounds the meaning of ``father'' and ``mother'' and confuses
the identity and kinship relations of any cloned child, and
thus threatens to weaken existing notions regarding who bears
which parental duties and responsibilities for children;
(5) because cloning requires no personal involvement by the
person whose genetic material is used, cloning could easily be
used to reproduce living or deceased persons without their
consent;
(6) creating cloned live-born human children (sometimes
called ``reproductive cloning'') necessarily begins by creating
cloned human embryos, a process which some also propose as a
way to create embryos for research or as sources of cells and
tissues for possible treatment of other humans;
(7) the prospect of creating new human life solely to be
exploited and destroyed in this way has been condemned on moral
grounds by many, including supporters of a right to abortion,
as displaying a profound disrespect for life, and recent
scientific advances with adult stem cells indicate that there
are fruitful and morally unproblematic alternatives to this
approach;
(8) in order to be effective, a ban on human cloning must
stop the cloning process at the beginning because--
(A) cloning would take place within the privacy of
a doctor-patient relationship;
(B) the transfer of embryos to begin a pregnancy is
a simple procedure; and
(C) any government effort to prevent the transfer
of an existing embryo, or to prevent birth once the
transfer has occurred, would raise substantial moral,
legal, and practical issues, so that it will be nearly
impossible to prevent attempts at ``reproductive
cloning'' once cloned human embryos are available in
the laboratory;
(9) the scientifically and medically useful practices of
cloning of DNA fragments, known as molecular cloning, the
duplication of somatic cells (or stem cells) in tissue culture,
known as cell cloning, and whole-organism or embryo cloning of
nonhuman animals are appropriate uses of medical technology;
(10) in the preamble to the 1998 Additional Protocol on the
Prohibition of Cloning Human Beings the Council of Europe
agreed that ``the instrumentalisation of human beings through
the deliberate creation of genetically identical human beings
is contrary to human dignity and thus constitutes a misuse of
biology and medicine''; and
(11) collaborative efforts to perform human cloning are
conducted in ways that affect interstate and even international
commerce, and the legal status of cloning will have a great
impact on how biotechnology companies direct their resources
for research and development.
SEC. 3. PROHIBITION ON HUMAN CLONING.
(a) In General.--Title 18, United States Code, is amended by
inserting after chapter 15, the following:
``CHAPTER 16--HUMAN CLONING
``Sec.
``301. Definitions.
``302. Prohibition on human cloning.
``Sec. 301. Definitions
``In this chapter:
``(1) Human cloning.--The term `human cloning' means human
asexual reproduction, accomplished by introducing the nuclear
material of a human somatic cell into a fertilized or
unfertilized oocyte whose nucleus has been removed or
inactivated to produce a living organism (at any stage of
development) with a human or predominantly human genetic
constitution.
``(2) Somatic cell.--The term `somatic cell' means a
diploid cell (having a complete set of chromosomes) obtained or
derived from a living or deceased human body at any stage of
development.
``Sec. 302. Prohibition on human cloning
``(a) In General.--It shall be unlawful for any person or entity,
public or private, in or affecting interstate commerce--
``(1) to perform or attempt to perform human cloning;
``(2) to participate in an attempt to perform human
cloning; or
``(3) to ship or receive the product of human cloning for
any purpose.
``(b) Importation.--It shall be unlawful for any person or entity,
public or private, to import the product of human cloning for any
purpose.
``(c) Penalties.--
``(1) In general.--Any person or entity that is convicted
of violating any provision of this section shall be fined under
this section or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
``(2) Civil penalty.--Any person or entity that is
convicted of violating any provision of this section shall be
subject to, in the case of a violation that involves the
derivation of a pecuniary gain, a civil penalty of not less
than $1,000,000 and not more than an amount equal to the amount
of the gross gain multiplied by 2, if that amount is greater
than $1,000,000.
``(d) Scientific Research.--Nothing in this section shall restrict
areas of scientific research not specifically prohibited by this
section, including research in the use of nuclear transfer or other
cloning techniques to produce molecules, DNA, cells other than human
embryos, tissues, organs, plants, or animals other than humans.''.
(b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of chapters for part I of title
18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the item relating
to chapter 15 the following:
``16. Human Cloning......................................... 301''.
SEC. 4. SENSE OF CONGRESS.
It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) the Federal Government should advocate for and join an
international effort to prohibit human cloning, as defined in
section 301 of title 18, United States Code, as added by this
Act; and
(2) the President should commission a study, to be
conducted by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission or a
successor group, of the arguments for and against the use of
cloning to produce human embryos solely for research, which
study should--
(A) include a discussion of the need (if any) for
human cloning to produce medical advances, the ethical
and legal aspects of human cloning, and the possible
impact of any decision to permit human cloning for
research upon efforts to prevent human cloning for
reproductive purposes;
(B) include a review of new developments in cloning
technology which may require that technical changes be
made to section 3 of this Act, to maintain the
effectiveness of this Act in prohibiting the asexual
production of a new human organism that is genetically
virtually identical to an existing or previously
existing human being; and
(C) be submitted to Congress and the President for
review not later than 5 years after the date of
enactment of this legislation.
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