After contentious debate, the US House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a sweeping ban on human cloning, a divisive issue that echoes the quandary facing President Bush on stem-cell research.
Representatives grappled for more than three hours with the moral and legal thicket of human cloning before voting 265-162 to approve the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001. It would impose steep penalties on anyone violating the ban - even scientists who create cloned human cells solely for research purposes.
The penalties make participation in human cloning in any way - from creating cloned human cells to receiving medicine based on such research done abroad - subject to a felony conviction that could bring a 10-year prison term, and, if done for profit, civil penalties of more than $1 million. Critics said the penalties could create a brain-drain of scientists, departing to work in other countries.
A similar bill has been introduced in the Senate by Republican Senator Brownback but it is not clear if Democrat Senator Tom Daschle who has said he opposes cloning "under virtually any circumstances" will bring the measure to the floor. The White House has strongly backed the complete ban.
While House members expressed total opposition to reproductive cloning - the production of a cloned baby - they were deeply divided on whether human cells should be cloned solely to be used for the research and treatment of disease, a practice called therapeutic cloning. A narrower, competing amendment that would have allowed cloning for research was defeated, 249 to 178.
The heated debate on human cloning was part primer on complicated medical science and part theology seminar. House members tackled one of the key issues facing elected officials in a world where the boundaries of science are ever-expanding: when does life begin?
As lawmakers gave their answers, many supporters of a ban on any form of human cloning talked about a vision of the future that not long ago would have seemed like science fiction: farms of human embryos; questions about the rights of cloned embryos; a world where parents can produce designer children.
Republican James R. Sensenbrenner, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which earlier this year held hearings on cloning, called it a "new brave world of Frankenstein science" and argued allowing research would be a "slippery slope".
Backers of a limited ban rejected that view as an "excessive fear of science and the possibility of scientific research". Instead, they recalled that most new inventions of medicine - from autopsies to vaccines to X-rays - have been greeted with scepticism and even outrage.
The science involved in cloning is closely related to stem-cell research - the subject of much national debate in recent weeks as Mr Bush has pondered his decision on funding.
More than 260 members of Congress - including many opponents of abortion - support federal funding for stem-cell research that involves embryos created in fertility treatments that would otherwise be discarded. But cloned cells would be created only for research.
Some scientists say stem-cell research on cloned cells may offer the best hope for developing successful replacement body parts - in effect replacing a patient's organ with a copy made based on her own genetic code.
But that prospect was rejected as "ghoulish" by some who backed the total ban.