The United States House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday banning all forms of human cloning.

The bill would make violators of the proposed law subject to a fine of no less than $1 million and jail time of no more than 10 years. The cloning-ban bill will now come under the review of the Senate.

President Bush called for such a bill in his State of the Union address in January and has said he would sign this bill if it passes Congress.

“Because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity and pass a law against all human cloning,” Bush said.

Two representatives from Wisconsin lined up on opposite sides of the issue when it came to a vote. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, both felt strongly about their respective stances on the issue.

Sensenbrenner’s press secretary, Raj Bharwani, said Sensenbrenner managed the bill on the floor of the House.

“[The bill] does not impede or prohibit stem-cell research,” Sensenbrenner said. “It is a bipartisan bill that is needed and accomplishes what the president asked for — a comprehensive ban against cloning humans.”

Baldwin disagreed, calling the bill “outrageous” and saying the bill reached too far into other areas of research.

“If this legislation passes, our country will have to halt embryonic stem-cell research and the use of this research to combat life-threatening or debilitating diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes,” Baldwin said.

The debate over cloning often takes on a similar tone of the decades-old abortion debate, which often comes down to an ideological estimation of when exactly human life begins.

Stem-cell research inputs the genetic material from any cell into an unfertilized egg, which is stimulated into dividing. After five to six days, stem cells can be extracted and used for research. Baldwin said this differs from reproductive cloning, which would involve cloning a human embryo.

“Everyone in Congress agrees that we want to ban any attempt to clone a human being,” Baldwin said.

Sensenbrenner said the concept of human cloning is ethically and morally offensive.

“It contradicts virtually everything Americans stand for and diminishes the careful balance of humanity,” Sensenbrenner said. “If we want a society where life is respected, we should take whatever steps are necessary to prohibit human cloning.”

Baldwin’s press secretary, Jonathan Beeton, said the bill would have adverse effects on the country’s technological progression if made law.

“This bill halts medical research going on right now at the University of Wisconsin,” Beeton said. “This will have a chilling effect on important advances in medical research.”

Beeton said Baldwin agrees the bill would have an adverse effect on technology and, therefore, the economy.

“What this law will do is succeed to foreign countries who will continue to research and eventually find cures to terrible diseases,” Beeton said. “The worst part of this law is that if a doctor in Germany finds a cure for Alzheimer’s disease through therapeutic cloning, it would be illegal to use that cure in the [United States].”