NEW YORK -- State lawmakers should not move hastily to ban cloning research because it could yield medical breakthroughs that benefit humanity, a Cornell cloning pioneer told a New York State Senate Committee last week.

"We want the public to know that the research on cloning can uniquely advance knowledge in ways that will improve the quality of life," said Robert H. Foote, Cornell professor emeritus of animal science and biology. "In fact, some techniques now used by in vitro fertilization clinics might be technically classified as cloning. For example, relatively infertile couples may be helped to have a baby resulting from their own sexually-initiated, single embryo, by expertly making these two embryos in vitro." He said this basically mimics nature's procedure of cloning when a young embryo splits spontaneously and both halves survive to produce identical twins.

Foote was one of several scientists and theologians to testify before the New York State Senate Committee on Investigation, chaired by State Sen. Roy Goodman (R-Manhattan), meeting in New York City on March 13. It was one of the first hearings held on the subject in a state legislature since Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut announced last month the successful cloning of a sheep.

Media hype has contributed to public misunderstanding, Foote told the state panel.

"Today, we are dealing with the remarkable discovery by Wilmut that an adult ewe was cloned from the mammary-gland cell of an adult ewe," Foote said. "This demonstrated for the first time that during development, the genes are not programmed irreversibly. Further research will provide an increased opportunity to discover and understand more how genes work, cells differentiate and how cells age and multiply in controlled or uncontrolled ways, as occurs in cancer, for example."

The professor brought to the hearing more than 40 years of scientific research experience in animal science at Cornell. He has authored 500 peer-reviewed, scientific papers on the subject of animal science, biology and animal reproduction.

Most of his work falls into four research categories: The in vitro fertilization, culture and micromanipulation of embryos; oogenesis, superovulation and embryo transfer; extenders for semen and sperm cryopreservation; and spermatogenesis and epididymal function. All of his work was done to improve agricultural animals or to provide a better understanding of the reproductive process in all mammals.

In the late 1950s, Foote used carbon-14 and thymidine radioisotopes to label DNA during spermatogenesis, to better understand how sperm are produced and to develop more effective procedures for harvesting sperm for artificial breeding in agricultural animals. With graduate students, he reported a classic study that established that all "eggs" in the adult female were formed as ovarian oocytes in the fetal ovary -- meaning that all eggs an adult female will ever have were present when she was born.

In 1970, before embryonic transfer had started commercially in cattle, Foote published a peer-reviewed paper stating that non-surgical embryonic transfer would be the method in the future. It was.

His animal reproduction research also led to improvement of animal health. He found the use of the antibiotic combination of penicillin, streptomycin and polymyxin, used between 1950 and 1988 to treat semen, helped to wipe out Vibrio fetus, a disease that had cost the cattle industry hundreds of millions of dollars.

Foote suggested to the legislative panel that cloning research could lead to the understanding of the aging process and to the understanding of why cells sometimes develop abnormally, he said. Also, cloning increases the opportunity to produce valuable medicinal products and can lead eventually to improve agricultural animals.

For example, agriculturally, cloning may lead to removing the protein in milk that causes allergies, to other changes in milk and meat composition, to hornless Holsteins and animals with increased disease resistance, he said.

Foote asked lawmakers not to inhibit, but to support this type of research. He cautioned the panel that the Wilmut-style cloning is vastly more difficult than people think. As in all aspects of life, there is much more to be learned, he said.

"One cannot predict precisely the benefits of properly thought-out research."