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FROM:   The Associated Press
 April 10, 2002, Wednesday,
 11:27 AM Eastern Time

SECTION: Washington Dateline
HEADLINE: President presses for U.S. prohibition on human cloning,
stressing
ethical issue
BYLINE: By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

 President Bush is pressing the Senate to approve legislation that would
outlaw the cloning of human beings for use in research and treatment of
diseases.

   Bush long has opposed human cloning. When he announced his decision in
August
to restrict but not forbid federal financing of so-called embryonic stem
cell
research, he said: "We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for
spare body
parts or creating life for our convenience."

   On Wednesday, Bush was speaking to 175 doctors, scientists, lawmakers,
religious activists and disabled people to mobilize bipartisan support
behind a
complete ban on cloning. Aides said Bush's speech would be "reflective"
on the
ethical issues that cloning poses.

   The cloning legislation joins a growing pile of bills that Bush favors
and
that have passed the Republican-controlled House but stalled in the
Democratic-controlled Senate.

   In recent days Bush has stepped up his calls for action on an array of
bills
pending in the Senate, including measures that would increase energy
conservation and exploration, grant him expanded powers in negotiating
trade
pacts and help businesses get terrorism insurance.

   Last July, the House passed a ban on all human cloning - the
production of
embryos that are the genetic twin of a donor. Many in the Senate oppose
using
cloning to create human beings, but support using the process to create
embryonic stem cells that may be used for research and the potential
treatment
of many diseases.

   The use of embryonic stem cells is controversial because extracting
the cells
kills a living human embryo. Bush decided in August that federal funding
would
be permitted only for stem cell cultures that then existed and which were
made
from embryos that were to be discarded by fertility clinics.

   The movement for a ban got a significant boost Tuesday when Sen. Bill
Frist,
R-Tenn., said he would support the cloning ban legislation, which the
Senate is
expected to debate in the weeks ahead. Though not a surprise, the
announcement
from Frist, a heart-transplant surgeon, is important because his views on
medical topics are respected by many in Congress.

   Creating a human embryo "for reason of experimentation leads to
destruction
of that embryo and to me that is morally unacceptable," Frist told
reporters.

   "I'm an advocate for embryonic stem cell research and stem cell
research -
tremendous promise for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, for the various
diseases," he
said Wednesday on CBS' "The Early Show." "But that is not the cloning of
human
embryos. I'm for cellular cloning, RNA cloning, DNA cloning, but not for
cloning
of embryos that have to be destroyed"

   Bush holds a similar view and welcomed Frist's support, the White
House said.

   Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., told an anti-cloning rally on Capitol Hill
Wednesday that a ban on human embryo cloning was "clearly a winnable
issue."
Standing before a stack of petitions with 400,000 signatures for a
cloning ban,
Brownback said that "cloning is wrong, period. Creating human life to
destroy it
is wrong."

   The cloning debate gained impetus in November when a Massachusetts
company,
Advanced Cell Technology, said it had cloned a human embryo for the first
time.
The company wants to extract stem cells from cloned embryos that could be
used
to grow healthy organs for patients.

   Scientists also are trying to see whether adult stem cells can serve
as
all-around repairmen in the body, thus avoiding killing embryos.

   The public overwhelmingly opposes scientific experimentation on the
cloning
of human beings, according to a new poll that also suggests public
opinion is
mixed on stem cell research.

   Nearly four out of five people opposed cloning, while one-third of
those
polled were against federal funding of stem cell research, according to
the poll
by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

   The poll of 2,002 adults was taken Feb. 25-March 10 and had an error
margin
of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points."

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