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Human cloning.

Wouldn't Jewish law prohibit such an act because it undermines the natural world God created?

Not necessarily. If used for therapeutic ends, the practice would be condoned by Jewish law, according to an Orthodox expert on Jewish medical ethics.

"If it's perfected with time…cloning could have tremendous benefits for mankind," said Rabbi Pinchas Lipner, speaking Saturday evening at the ninth annual International Conference on Jewish Medical Ethics in Burlingame.

During a nearly three-hour session at the Park Plaza Hotel, he joined Drs. Charles Epstein and Kenneth Shine and other rabbis in advancing a debate that has replayed itself in national headlines ever since the birth of Dolly, the now infamous cloned sheep.

Following the Scottish sheep's arrival in the world, reports on the specter of human cloning flooded the media, resulting in a flurry of legislative activity. The White House called for a five-year ban on cloning humans, and anti-cloning legislation was filed in the Senate.

But Saturday night, panelists urged the public and legislators to slow down, take a deep breath and determine what cloning would and would not mean. It is unlikely, they said, to mean we'll be bumping into exact duplicates of ourselves or Albert Einstein in the street anytime soon. In fact, one doctor explained, cloned organisms are not completely identical to those that spawned them.

But cloning could mean producing cells and tissues that could prove useful for people whose own specialized cells and tissues — bone marrow or liver, for example — are no longer viable.

Lipner argued that halachically there is no basis for disallowing human cloning. Most rabbis, he pointed out, consider the acquisition of knowledge for the sake of finding cures for human illnesses to be divinely sanctioned, if not mandated.

Because the Torah forbids standing idly by and not saving a human life, cloning, were it to be honed, could ultimately be viewed as an obligation.

And because Jewish law would consider cloning for certain purposes legal, Judaism would also view the practice as ethical.

"What is ethical in Judaism is legal, and what is legal is ethical," Lipner pointed out. "We don't divide the two."

In the Jewish view, chief among the potential benefits of human cloning would be helping infertile couples procreate. "In Judaism, having children is a very serious matter and families that can't have them could possibly [do so] through cloning," said Lipner, dean of San Francisco's Hebrew Academy and its Institute for Jewish Medical Ethics, which sponsors the conference.

Lipner also acknowledged, however, that human cloning could lead to unknown consequences. He urged taking a measured approach to research and developing moral, ethical and legal guidelines.

Banning a practice before fully understanding its implications, he added, would be wrong.

Earlier in the evening, Shine also addressed the current anti-cloning climate. He charged the press with whipping the public into a science fiction-inspired frenzy over the very notion of cloning.

"Whether it's Monica Lewinsky or Dolly, the media in this country gets into frenzies, and it's extremely difficult to determine what's reality," said Shine, president of the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.

"In a period of hype, people come along who want to ride the gravy train."

In examining the public outcry over the possibility of human cloning, Shine, who is also a clinical professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, addressed the important interplay between science and society. In his view, society must sometimes set limitations on the directions science takes.

As an example, he cited biological warfare, which is "doable from a scientific point of view but inappropriate from an ethical point of view."

On the other hand, he said that the increasing intrusion of politics and theology into science — he cited bans on embryo research as an example — has a chilling effect on progress.

"The result is that whole areas of science that could be beneficial, either as a result of a direct product or a spin-off, don't happen."

Shine agrees with the National Biomedical Advisory Commission, which has recommended a moratorium on the cloning of human beings until more information is gathered.

"We don't know if you clone someone, if you're going to have more congenital abnormalities, more genetic defects."