[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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