Just so you know where he's coming from. Naturally, all italicization is mine. I rather like the effect.

Testimony Before United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime on “The Ethics of Cloning”

June 7, 2001

Testimony of Leon R. Kass, M.D., Ph.D.*

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. My name is Leon Kass, and I am the Addie Clark Harding Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and the College at the University of Chicago.

Originally trained both as a physician and a biochemist, I have for more than thirty years been professionally concerned with the social and ethical implications of biomedical advance. In fact, my first writing in this area, in 1967, was on the moral dangers of human cloning.

I am therefore very grateful for the opportunity to testify before this Committee on the ethics of human cloning and in support of HR 1644, the “Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001.”...

I argue that we stand now at a major fork in the road, compelled to decide whether we wish to travel down the path to the Brave New World...I heartily endorse HR 1644....

...human cloning is unethical in itself and dangerous in its likely consequences.... the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans remain firmly opposed to cloning human beings.

....What should we do about it?....What we should do is work to prevent human cloning by making it illegal.

We should aim for a global legal ban, if possible, and for a unilateral national ban at a minimum...

...renegade scientists may secretly undertake to violate such a law, but we can deter them by both criminal sanctions and monetary penalties....

Michigan, for example, has made it a felony, punishable by imprisonment for not more than ten years or a fine of not more than $10 million, or both, to “intentionally engage in or attempt to engage in human cloning,” where human cloning means “the use of human somatic cell nuclear transfer technology to produce a human embryo.” ....

...all halfway measures will prove to be morally, legally, and strategically flawed....Anyone truly serious about preventing human reproductive cloning must seek to stop the process from the beginning...

...some scientists favor embryo cloning as a way of obtaining embryos for research or as sources of cells and tissues for the possible benefit of others...

The prospect of creating new human life solely to be exploited in this way has been condemned on moral grounds by many people...

...the only practically effective and legally sound approach is to block human cloning at the start, at the production of the embryo clone...

Some...may balk at such a comprehensive restriction. They want to get their hands on those embryos, especially for their stem cells...

It is the promise of rejection-free tissues for transplantation that so far has been the most successful argument in favor of experimental cloning.

Yet new discoveries have shown that we can probably obtain the same benefits without embryo cloning...

Numerous recent studies have shown that it is possible to obtain highly potent stem cells from the bodies of children and adults...

Beyond all expectations, these non-embryonic stem cells have been shown to have the capacity to turn into a wide variety of specialized cells and tissues. (At the same time, early human therapeutic efforts with stem cells derived from embryos have produced some horrible results...

Since cells derived from our own bodies are more easily and cheaply available than cells harvested from specially manufactured clones, we will almost surely be able to obtain from ourselves any needed homologous transplantable cells and tissues...

By pouring our resources into adult stem cell research....we can also avoid the morally and legally vexing issues in embryo research...

Scientists and doctors.... are today working to clone human beings...They are prepared to gamble with the well-being of any live-born clones...all for the glory of being the first to replicate a human being...

I appreciate that a federal legislative ban on human cloning is without American precedent...

Perhaps such a ban will prove ineffective; perhaps it will eventually be shown to have been a mistake. (If so, it could later be reversed)...

...we can strike a blow for the human control of the technological project...The prospect of human cloning, so repulsive to contemplate, is the occasion for deciding whether we shall be slaves of unregulated innovation, and ultimately its artifacts...The humanity of the human future is now in our hands.

Unhand my humanity, sir!

Note that in 2001 he's already talking up the virtues of adult stem cells, casting about for an alternative, any alternative to cloning. Damn you, Aldous Huxley! Why did you have to go and frighten the young Leon?

As Dr. Gearhart told the PCB the following year, both avenues of research are necessary. They complement one another. Also, it is impossible to predict which one will will ultimately be more valuable. It's simply too early to tell.