Also, at least two bills have been introduced in Congress to ban human cloning research.
President Thomas Okarma, speaking on behalf of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, underscored the numerous benefits of human cloning research and expressed opposition to the all-out ban.
Advocates of human embryo cloning for medical research claim the practice could lead to the discovery of treatments for illnesses currently deemed incurable.
This happened last summer when the House of Representatives passed legislation that bans all applications of human cloning -- both research and reproductive -- with stiff penalties for violators.
Frist's principles include banning human cloning and allowing taxpayer dollars for research only on embryos created for in-vitro fertilization and not from abortions.
Last month, Prof Wilmut announced that he was abandoning the cloning of human embryos in stem cell research in favour of a new technique developed in Japan.
The Vatican has over recent decades issued blanket condemnations of artificial methods of birth control, in-vitro fertilization, therapeutic and reproductive cloning, and human embryonic stem cell research.
The basic techniques of human embryo creation that Dr. Edwards pioneered form the technical foundation of in vitro fertilization, human cloning techniques, genetic screening of human embryos and embryonic-stem-cell research.
WSJ: Test-Tube Baby Pioneer Robert Edwards Wins Nobel Prize for Medicine
Lovell-Badge added that concerns that embryonic research might lead to reproductive human cloning were unfounded.
"The administration unequivocally is opposed to the cloning of human beings either for reproduction or research, " said the statement.
"The administration unequivocally is opposed to the cloning of human beings either for reproduction or research, " said a statement of administration policy released Monday.
Last year, Britain proposed allowing human cells to be cloned for research purposes while other European countries, including Spain and France have banned human cloning altogether.
In March the United Nations abandoned its bid to impose a blanket ban on human cloning because of opposition from countries that support embryonic research for therapeutic purposes.
Rep. Peter Deutsch, D-Florida, a co-sponsor of the Greenwood measure, said he agreed with the idea that human cloning should be banned, but said some cloning practices should be allowed for the sake of scientific research.
There is no law against private stem cell research in the US, but Mr Bush has called for an international United Nations ban on all human cloning, prompting ire from a number of countries which allow the process under regulated conditions for research purposes.
The last time I checked with biologists, philosophers and even politicians on both sides of the debates about abortion, stem cell research and cloning, they were pretty certain human individuals were defined by two sets of chromosomes (half from the male, half from the female) which were arranged in the one-celled zygote after fertilization.
FORBES: Biologist Asserts Your Life Began...Before Fertilization.
Without such safeguards in place, there is no reason to assume that human cloning will not repeat the messy trial and error of current animal research.
"The administration is strongly opposed to any legislation that would prohibit human cloning for reproductive purposes but permit the creation of cloned embryos for research, " the policy statement said.
During the debate public health minister Yvette Cooper made an impassioned plea for scientists to be given the go-ahead for stem cell research, denying it was a "slippery slope" to human cloning.
This area of research remains somewhat controversial in medicine, because critics say this could lead to human cloning.
应用推荐