The move to ban human cloning without consideration of the legal and ethical issues surrounding reproductive technologies has prompted observers in Tokyo to call for the creation of an independent national bioethics committee. They say that, unlike other industrialized nations, Japan lacks guidelines on reproductive medicine with which to legislate against cloning.

A law prohibiting cloning is expected to pass the Japanese parliament by year's end. It has been drafted in accordance with a report by a bioethics panel established two years ago by the Council for Science and Technology (CST)—an advisory body chaired by the Japanese prime minister.

Hiroo Imura

Motoya Katsuki, a developmental biologist at the Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Tokyo, and a member of the CST's cloning and human embryo research committees, condones a cloning ban, but says "to forbid human cloning in the absence of any consensus on the general handling of human embryos is hasty and without rationale." He fears that some researchers could now exploit reproductive techniques, which have become a lucrative and expanding business in Japan.

But Hiroo Imura, a permanent member of council and former dean of Kyoto University, who chairs the CST's bioethics committee, defends the council's decision, arguing that it would have been unrealistic to aim for more comprehensive legislation: "Our goal was to deal with the issue of human cloning first." According to Imura, deliberations at the committee—the first proper bioethics advisory body in Japan—were protracted. Critics also counter that the CST's bioethics committee has yet to draft an agenda for its activities, a void seen by many as proof of the council's continued dependence on the Science and Technology Agency (STA).

Crunch-time for the committee should come with government reform in 2001, when the CST will have to operate independently of the STA. This will determine whether a bioethics committee with more extensive responsibilities than the present one, is required.