A proposal before the American Bar Association would put the 408,000-lawyer organization on record for the first time about cloning and at odds with the Bush administration. The ABA's governing body is to vote today or Tuesday on what scientists call therapeutic cloning, or the engineering of human embryos for the medically precious stem cells they contain. Stem cells might then develop into replacement tissue and organs for patients with incurable diseases. Cloning one's own cells could overcome the body's tendency to reject transplanted tissue, researchers hope.
Therapeutic cloning, not yet tried in humans, assumes that the created embryo will be destroyed. It is not intended to make a baby, and the proposed ABA position implicitly opposes cloning for reproductive purposes, supporters said.
President Bush wants a permanent ban on cloning for biomedical research, and the House took the same position last year.
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