hical to society. Regulation and restriction must be established in order to outlaw the implantation of a cloned embryo into a woman's womb. Because human embryo research is just in its infancy, there has been a rush to decide what guidelines are going to be instituted for governing cloning experiments. However, we must not make rash decisions to ban cloning because "[w]hat's at stake here are lifesaving technologies, the only hope for thousands afflicted with Parkinson's disease, diabetes, cancer, and other deadly and disabling diseases (Carey 2)." To assist the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in determining which cloning experiments to fund, a medical panel was set up to form a preliminary set of guidelines. Steven Muller, the head of the panel, set out with the help of several prominent biologists including, Brigid Hogan and embryology specialist Mark Hughes, to put together a set of guidelines that would satisfy the concerns of both the scientific and religious communities. The religious community vigorously opposes all human cloning procedures for fear that humans are attempting to play God and destroy the family. The scientific community sympathizes with the religious communities concerns, but does not want to lose the enormous amount of information that may be gained by human embryo cloning. Muller's panel announced a set of guidelines that they hope would be acceptable to both communities. They recommended research be permitted on embryos allowing them to develop up to and including the fourteenth day. Researchers would also be allowed to produce new embryos for what the NIH considers compelling research. Researchers would also be permitted to remove some of the embryonic cells from embryos that are destined for in vitro fertilization at a later time (Marshall 1024). The panel did not come to a decision in several other areas including research funding. The panel suggested that research might be permitted after the fourteent...
