I 
112TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 6623 
To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit human cloning. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
NOVEMBER 30, 2012 
Mr. HARRIS introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee 
on the Judiciary 
A BILL 
To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit human 
cloning. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Human Cloning Prohi-
bition Act of 2012’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds that— 
(1) some individuals have announced that they 
will attempt to clone human beings using the tech-
nique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer already 
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used with limited success in sheep and other ani-
mals; 
(2) nearly all scientists agree that such at-
tempts pose a massive risk of producing children 
who are stillborn, unhealthy, or severely disabled, 
and considered opinion is virtually unanimous that 
such attempts are therefore grossly irresponsible and 
unethical; 
(3) efforts to create human beings by cloning 
mark a new and decisive step toward turning human 
reproduction into a manufacturing process in which 
children are made in laboratories to preordained 
specifications and, potentially, in multiple copies; 
(4) because it is an asexual form of reproduc-
tion, cloning confounds the meaning of ‘‘father’’ and 
‘‘mother’’ and confuses the identity and kinship rela-
tions of any cloned child, and thus threatens to 
weaken existing notions regarding who bears which 
parental duties and responsibilities for children; 
(5) because cloning requires no personal in-
volvement by the person whose genetic material is 
used, cloning could easily be used to reproduce living 
or deceased persons without their consent; 
(6) creating cloned live-born human children 
(sometimes called ‘‘reproductive cloning’’) nec-
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essarily begins by creating cloned human embryos, a 
process which some also propose as a way to create 
embryos for research or as sources of cells and tis-
sues for possible treatment of other humans; 
(7) the prospect of creating new human life 
solely to be exploited and destroyed in this way has 
been condemned on moral grounds by many, includ-
ing supporters of a right to abortion, as displaying 
a profound disrespect for life, and recent scientific 
advances with adult stem cells indicate that there 
are fruitful and morally unproblematic alternatives 
to this approach; 
(8) in order to be effective, a ban on human 
cloning must stop the cloning process at the begin-
ning because— 
(A) cloning would take place within the 
privacy of a doctor-patient relationship; 
(B) the transfer of embryos to begin a 
pregnancy is a simple procedure; and 
(C) any government effort to prevent the 
transfer of an existing embryo, or to prevent 
birth once the transfer has occurred, would 
raise substantial moral, legal, and practical 
issues, so that it will be nearly impossible to 
prevent attempts at ‘‘reproductive cloning’’ once 
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cloned human embryos are available in the lab-
oratory; 
(9) the scientifically and medically useful prac-
tices of cloning of DNA fragments, known as molec-
ular cloning, the duplication of somatic cells (or 
stem cells) in tissue culture, known as cell cloning, 
and whole-organism or embryo cloning of nonhuman 
animals are appropriate uses of medical technology; 
(10) in the preamble to the 1998 Additional 
Protocol on the Prohibition of Cloning Human 
Beings the Council of Europe agreed that ‘‘the 
instrumentalisation of human beings through the de-
liberate creation of genetically identical human 
beings is contrary to human dignity and thus con-
stitutes a misuse of biology and medicine’’; 
(11) collaborative efforts to perform human 
cloning are conducted in ways that affect interstate 
and even international commerce, and the legal sta-
tus of cloning will have a great impact on how bio-
technology companies direct their resources for re-
search and development; 
(12) at least 23 countries have banned all 
human cloning, including Canada, France, and Ger-
many; 
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(13) the United Nations has passed a declara-
tion calling for all human cloning to be banned by 
member nations; and 
(14) attempts to create cloned human embryos 
for development of embryonic stem cell lines have 
been unsuccessful, including the exploitation of over 
a hundred women in South Korea to provide over 
2,000 human eggs without the production of a single 
stem cell line. 
SEC. 3. PROHIBITION ON HUMAN CLONING. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—Title 18, United States Code, is 
amended by inserting after chapter 15, the following: 
‘‘CHAPTER 16—HUMAN CLONING 
‘‘Sec. 
‘‘301. Definitions. 
‘‘302. Prohibition on human cloning. 
‘‘§ 301. Definitions 
‘‘In this chapter: 
‘‘(1) HUMAN
CLONING.—The term ‘human 
cloning’ means human asexual reproduction, accom-
plished by introducing the nuclear material of a 
human somatic cell into a fertilized or unfertilized 
oocyte whose nucleus has been removed or inac-
tivated to produce a living organism (at any stage 
of development) with a human or predominantly 
human genetic constitution. 
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‘‘(2) SOMATIC CELL.—The term ‘somatic cell’ 
means a diploid cell (having a complete set of chro-
mosomes) obtained or derived from a living or de-
ceased human body at any stage of development. 
‘‘§ 302. Prohibition on human cloning 
‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—It shall be unlawful for any per-
son or entity, public or private, in or affecting interstate 
commerce— 
‘‘(1) to perform or attempt to perform human 
cloning; 
‘‘(2) to participate in an attempt to perform 
human cloning; or 
‘‘(3) to ship or receive the product of human 
cloning for any purpose. 
‘‘(b) IMPORTATION.—It shall be unlawful for any per-
son or entity, public or private, to import the product of 
human cloning for any purpose. 
‘‘(c) PENALTIES.— 
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Any person or entity that 
is convicted of violating any provision of this section 
shall be fined under this section or imprisoned not 
more than 10 years, or both. 
‘‘(2) CIVIL
PENALTY.—Any person or entity 
that is convicted of violating any provision of this 
section shall be subject to, in the case of a violation 
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that involves the derivation of a pecuniary gain, a 
civil penalty of not less than $1,000,000 and not 
more than an amount equal to the amount of the 
gross gain multiplied by 2, if that amount is greater 
than $1,000,000. 
‘‘(d) SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.—Nothing in this sec-
tion shall restrict areas of scientific research not specifi-
cally prohibited by this section, including research in the 
use of nuclear transfer or other cloning techniques to 
produce molecules, DNA, cells other than human embryos, 
tissues, organs, plants, or animals other than humans.’’. 
(b) CLERICAL AMENDMENT.—The table of chapters 
for part I of title 18, United States Code, is amended by 
inserting after the item relating to chapter 15 the fol-
lowing: 
‘‘16. Human Cloning ..........................................................................
301’’. 
Æ 
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