In addition, many are now multi-site protocols, which involve various teams of investigators and large numbers of research subjects. As a result, worries abound that IRBs may not be able adequately to protect research subjects. NBAC awaits the results of two studies that are currently underway in order to determine whether it needs additional information before it can assess the current IRB system. Another possible gap includes the limited attention to community in the interpretation of the Belmont principles of beneficence, respect for persons, and justice, which guide local IRBs where other guidance is not sufficiently specific. Cloning Human Beings NBAC s report, Cloning Human Beings , recommended continuing the moratorium on the use of federal funds for human cloning to create children, continuing the call for a voluntary private moratorium, and passing federal legislation to prohibit somatic cell nuclear transfer to create children.
Safety is a fundamental ethical consideration .
It is not merely a scientific consideration, even though it obviously requires scientific evidence. Any procedure that creates a substantial risk of harm to children is morally problematic. To be sure, other important ethical issues also arise from the prospect of human cloning, and these require careful, thoughtful, and imaginative reflection over time so that the society will be ready to respond appropriately to human cloning if the technique appears to be safe. However, it did not attempt to resolve nor is it likely that it could have resolved these other ethical and social issues that emerge once the safety threshold is crossed. There is disagreement in the society and possibly also in NBAC about whether any conceivable acts of human cloning could ever be justified if the technique were safe for the children so created.