The FDA has asserted otherwise since 1998, saying that although it has no authority over how doctors practice medicine, it does have authority over human cloning. It shows that their assertion of jurisdiction is really a stretch. Several experts dismissed that interpretation. Curiously, the only vocal support for the FDA's claim to authority over cloning has come from those who stand to be regulated by the agency as they work with cloned cells and human embryos. Michael Soules, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, concurred when he testified before Congress in March.
Lawmakers do sometimes blunder on science issues.
A loosely worded 1997 California ban on human cloning has inadvertently made it a crime for doctors to use a fertility treatment that does not involve cloning. But FDA regulation won't satisfy some opponents of human cloning. For one thing, the FDA is legally bound to consider only objective concerns such as safety and efficacy, not moral issues. That means that if human cloning were shown to be safe and effective, the agency would be obliged to allow the research. It has no regulatory qualms about scientists creating and destroying cloned human embryos to obtain embryonic stem cells, for example, which have the potential to cure many diseases.