 Who placed the ban on funding for human cloning research?
President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills are in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning--a step urged on all governments by the pope himself. Cloning humans is taken to be either 1) a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped or, at the very least, 2) a complex ethical issue that needs legislation and regulation. And for a politician, making noise about cloning is pretty close to a fleshly temptation itself. After all, how much federally funded research was stopped by this ban? Probably almost none, because Clinton has maintained Ronald Reagan's policy of minimizing federal grants for research in human reproduction. Besides, most researchers thought cloning humans was impossible--so, for the moment, there's unlikely to be a grant-request backlog. There is nothing like banning the nonexistent to show true leadership. He also openly claims the authority to decide how people reproduce. But calling for secular governments to implement a ban, thus extending his power beyond those he can persuade, shows rather explicitly that the pope does not respect the freedom of others. So the pope's views on cloning are 1 st century rules applied using 15 th century religious thinking to a 21 st century issue. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in "test-tube babies." Even if people have the right to do it, is cloning a good idea? Cloning would only copy the genetic aspects of people who are already here.
 President Clinton
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