Elders: You know, I think cloning is going to continue. You know, we talk about cloning humans, cloning for reproductive purposes as he talked about, but cloning is taking place in other countries. the United States can sit back and say, well, I'm not going to be involved in it, just say no. But then if you say no to that, then you cannot be involved. You're not involved in making the decisions about what's right and what's wrong. You can't get involved in the ethics I think we need to be involved in it.

Capron: Joycelyn, I think I disagree with that because, if you look, the European union has passed laws against reproductive cloning, the Japanese are against it, the Chinese have even said that they don't want it. I don't know what the Indians have done yet. It's not that relevant for Africa and Latin America right now because I don't think there are big pushes towards it.

We, in fact, don't have any federal statute on cloning. Right now, there's a debate in the United Nations about an international treaty that would ban cloning. if we want to be a participant in that, we really need to get our act together. The reason the federal government has not passed a statute is because of the debate not about reproductive cloning, which just about everybody seems to be against, even the national academy of sciences --

Zavala [host]: -- and we should explain, reproductive is simply another way to make a human being, as opposed to therapeutic cloning which is a way to actually treat a disease or do something medically.

Capron: Right, or to do - I think the word "therapeutic" is a little bit of an overstatement. It's more research cloning.

Capron: But the problem there is that conservatives in congress do not want to have a statute that says okay to research cloning, but a ban on reproductive cloning, because what that means is, it's all right to create embryos as long as you destroy them and, of course, that's unacceptable to that point of view. On the other side, people who think that the research will pay off in terms of developing treatments for disease or understanding diseases better are unwilling to say let's hold off on that for the moment and just do stem cell research that doesn't come from cloned embryos.

Marlow [host]: But cloning just to duplicate yourself opens up a real can of worms that both of you gentlemen as lawyers must have some concern about. Take a divorce. Who gets custody of the child that's been cloned because it really only belongs to one parent, right?

Hiepler: There are many legal issues and you go back to moral issues and the sanctity of life. How much are we going to get involved in it? I think there's one clear area on the reproductive side. People of all faiths, of all beliefs, have said we shouldn't be there, but many people have had concern about the slippery slope. That if you start allowing it one step beyond human, then you're going to eventually take over and people are going to be paying to clone themselves for some crazy reason like people built monuments to themselves.

Capron: Well, another reason that's frequently cited is if there's a death of a relative. Let's say a child has died and the parents are grieving about that. They say, well, we could take a cell from that child and create a copy of the child. In a way, it's a very understandable impulse to want to get someone back and have their special qualities.

But the problem is that you aren't your genes. Your genes act in an environment. Right from the moment of conception and through the prenatal period and then every day after that, all the environmental influences determine who you are. The notion of locking someone into a predetermined path, that because little Johnny did this, little Johnny number two is going to do the same thing, go to the zoo on his third birthday, because you want to recreate, is not the notion of human freedom that is inherent in our belief of a liberal society.

Elders: Well, I think this is why we need to start having discussions about it. Right now, we're just closing the door and we're not even talking about it and I think that's how we're going to get in trouble.

Capron: Well, I'd like to close the door and then talk about it (laughter) because right now the scientific risks, the medical risks, are so overwhelming that, as I say, even the national academy of sciences, which is usually not one to say legislate against any new development, says don't do this, let's have legislation to stop it.