PHILADELPHIA - Researchers at Stanford University have announced a plan to use human cloning to create stem cells for medical research.

A spokeswoman for the university said Tuesday that scientists there would transfer the DNA of adult cells into human egg cells - a process similar to that used to create Dolly the sheep. But the human clones would not be allowed to develop beyond the earliest stages.

The university's research will rely on private financing to avoid a restriction imposed by the Bush administration that severely limits stem-cell research paid for by federal dollars.

The Stanford announcement is likely to accelerate the administration's efforts to ban human cloning, said Art Caplan, a medical ethicist with the University of Pennsylvania.

The cells that Stanford wants to create - embryonic stem cells - have been exciting medical science for several years because such cells have the potential to become any type of tissue: heart, nerves, pancreas, bone, skin. Supporters of stem-cell research say it could lead to revolutionary treatments for such devastating diseases as diabetes, Parkinson's disease and ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

Such cells generally come from extra human embryos created and destroyed in fertility clinics. A few come from specially created embryos or from aborted fetuses. Such work has been strongly opposed by abortion foes who abhor the destruction of something that could become a human being.

Current law forbids the use of federal financing for any research that destroys human embryos to create stem cells, allowing only work on existing lines of stem cells. Researchers are permitted to use embryos or cloning to make new stem cells as long as they use private financing.

Stanford would break ground by cloning cells from adult volunteers as well as from donated human egg cells.

Last year, the Boston-based company Advanced Cell Technology created a cloned embryo but did not turn it into a line of stem cells. If Stanford researchers succeed in completing such a process, they would be the first.

Penn's Caplan said the cloning process was ethically preferable to the use of embryos from sperm and egg.

For one thing, it is not known whether an embryo created from cloning can become a live human being, since it has only been done in sheep, cows, mice, and a handful of other animals. "Cloned embryos have proven very difficult to turn into healthy animals," Caplan said.

In that case, cloned cells would not represent potential human beings, Caplan said.

And stem cells from cloning may prove more practical medically, he said. With cloning, doctors could create an embryo from a patient's own cells, eliminating the risk of rejection.

If it is medically more promising, he said, then the research is morally more defensible.

Caplan said he believed it was likely that the Bush administration would seek to outlaw such research. Last year, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., introduced a bill to make illegal the type of cloning to be done at Stanford, Caplan said.

The Stanford project will be part of the new Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, launched with an anonymous, $12 million donation to the school. Much of the institute's research will be geared to treating cancer. Any stem cells created will be shared with outside researchers, many of whom complain of inadequate access to available stem-cell lines.

Dr. Irving Weissman, an outspoken stem-cell research proponent, was named institute director.

"Our avowed goal is to advance science," he said. "For any group to stay out of the action and wait for someone else to do it because of political reasons is wrong."

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