Cloning people is a 'crime against humanity'

An international alliance of scientists, doctors and legal experts has called upon the United Nations to seek a ruling from the International Court of Justice (World Court) that would classify human reproductive cloning as a crime against humanity. The Human Cloning Policy Institute (HCPI) wants to ban attempts to clone humans, whilst allowing SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer ) research to continue. Scientists working on therapeutic cloning are hoping to use SCNT to develop new treatments for a range of diseases, using stem cells' derived from early human embryos.

Bernard Siegel, executive director of HCPI, said recently: 'Human reproductive cloning activities performed by unscrupulous scientists are experimentation. No individual scientist, corporation, business enterprise or nation has the moral or legal warrant to clone human beings'. He stressed that it was 'extremely important' to recognise the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning, and that 'informed scientific opinion worldwide supports therapeutic cloning of stem cells'. Siegel urged support for the 'World Court Initiative', which, he said, would strip away any vestige of support for would-be human cloners, such as Zavos and Antinori.

HCPI member Alan Trounson, of Monash University in Melbourne, writing in New Scientist magazine, said that there were a number of legal grounds for making human reproductive cloning a crime against humanity. He cited the Nuremberg code of ethics, drawn up in response to atrocities carried out in Nazi concentration camps, which states that: 'No experiment should be conducted where there is a prior reason to believe that a death or disabling injury will occur'. He went on to say that it was 'clearly risky to continue to rely on the inefficiency of cloning as the main barrier to it being done'. He stressed that reproductive cloning was likely to have terrible consequences, judging from the results of animal cloning experiments.

Earlier this month, the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) narrowly voted to postpone any decision on a global human cloning ban until 2005. This meant that delegates did not vote on two other competing cloning resolutions, one of which sought to ban all forms of cloning, while the other aimed to ban human reproductive cloning but still allow therapeutic cloning.

Several countries have already passed national human cloning legislation, and Singapore is set to be the latest country to criminalise this activity. Its Bioethics Advisory Committee has published draft guidelines on the issue, which propose 10-year jail sentences and fines of up to $100,000 for scientists who attempt to clone humans. The penalties will be laid out in the forthcoming Regulation of Biomedical Research Act of 2003, which is expected to be approved by early next year. Scientists wanting to carry out research on human embryo stem cells will be required to obtain Health Ministry approval.