Madison, Wis. — A proposed ban on all human embryonic cloning in the state will be voted on in the state Senate Tuesday, a proposal opposed by many in the medical research community.
The proposed ban, known as AB 499 in the Assembly and SB 243 in the Senate, would outlaw not only cloning for reproductive purposes but also what proponents call therapeutic or research cloning, in which an embryo is created with identical DNA as an original subject for the purposes of harvesting stem cells after the first several days of development. The embryo is destroyed in the process.