WASHINGTON DC — The US President's Council on Bioethics will likely issue their final report on human cloning by the end of the summer, chairperson Leon Kass told The Scientist after the Council's meeting last week.

Although the Council's fourth meeting, on June 20 and 21, took place just a few days after the most recent Congressional wranglings over a potential moratorium on human cloning, the Council will decide on a most ethically acceptable course of action without paying much attention to the goings-on in Congress, according to Kass. At this point, it is all but assured that no cloning bill will reach the Senate floor this year.

"We decided early on that we're not going to try to follow a moving target," said Kass, now on leave from his post as a professor on the Committee on Social Thought at the from the University of Chicago, said. "If...

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