After nearly a year of emotional arguments in Congress but no new federal laws, the national debate over the future of human cloning has shifted to the states. Six states have already banned cloning in one form. or another, and this year alone 38 anticloning measures were introduced in 22 states.
The resulting patchwork of laws, people on all sides of the issue say, complicates a nationwide picture already clouded by scientific and ethical questions over whether and how to restrict cloning or to ban it altogether.
Since 1997, when scientists announced the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, the specter of cloned babies, infants that are in essence genetic carbon copies of adults, has loomed large in the public psyche and in the minds of lawmakers.
Today, there is widespread agreement that cloning for reproduction is unsafe and should be banned. Now, the debate has shifted away from the ethics of baby-making and toward the morality of cloning embryos for their cells and tissues, which might be used to treat diseases. The controversy pits religious conservatives and abortion opponents, who regard embryos as nascent human life, against patients groups, scientists and the biotechnology industry.