question:  Who placed the ban on funding for human cloning research?
context: Human Clones: Why Not? 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. I have no moral right to tell other people they shouldn't be able to have children, and I don't see that Bill Clinton has that right either. 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. Sheep feature prominently in the Bible, but cloning does not. 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. Truly natural human reproduction would mean 50 percent infant mortality and make pregnancy-related death the No. 1 killer of adult women. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involved in "test-tube babies." The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. 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.
output:  President Clinton
options:  Congress  President Bush  President Clinton  The Federal Funding Agency