WASHINGTON'On a day tinged with warnings that biologists could misshape the human race, President Bush urged a tentative Senate on Wednesday to pass a total ban on human cloning, even if used as part of research into cures for disease and disability.
\Allowing cloning would be taking a significant step toward a society in which human beings are grown for spare body parts, and children are engineered to custom specifications. And that's not acceptable,"" the president told about 175 lawmakers, religious activists, researchers and disabled people in the East Room of the White House.
He spoke of human ""embryo farms"" created by scientists to pursue research on cloning. And he warned that even if cloning yielded cures for disease, it ""would create a massive national market"" for women's eggs ""and exploitation of women's bodies that we cannot and must not allow.""
The 15-minute speech marked the second time that Bush has devoted a major address to controversial advances in biology, a reflection of the speedy pace of the science. Last August, the president devoted the first prime-time, televised speech of his term to the subject of embryonic stem cells, the medically promising cells that come from dissected human embryos.
Bush spoke as lobbying intensified in the Senate in preparation for a vote on human cloning, expected before the Memorial Day break next month.
Opponents of cloning for any purpose said they brought several hundred members of anti-abortion and religious groups to Washington on Wednesday to lobby lawmakers. But 40 Nobel Prize winners urged the Senate to allow cloning as part of medical research, warning that a ban ""would impede progress against some of the most debilitating diseases known to man.""
Cloning involves taking DNA from a donor, often from a skin or cheek cell, and merging it with an egg cell that has been stripped of its own genetic material. The result is an embryo with the same genetic makeup as the donor, although there have been no credible claims that any scientist has produced a cloned child.
Theoretically, a human embryo created this way could be placed in a woman's uterus and grown into a child. This is called reproductive cloning, and the Senate, House and President Bush are united in supporting legislation to make it a federal crime, punishable with heavy fines and jail terms.
