The European parliament last week emphatically rejected a call for a ban on all forms of human cloning and end to European funding of experiments on human embryos. MEPs voted overwhelmingly to throw out the controversial Fiori Report on Human Genetics in Modern Medicine following debates and votes on the many amendments that had been added to it.
The 200 amendments to the report left many parliamentarians dissatisfied with the final version of the report. After the vote, Peter Liese, a German conservative MEP, commented that 'it is better to have no text at all than a fully contradictory one'. The Party of European Socialists had decided in advance to reject the report. It would seem that many others, including Christian Democrats, did the same, the final count being 316-37 against adopting the report, with 47 MEPs abstaining.
If the Fiori Report had been adopted in its original form, EU plans to spend to spend 2.15 billion euros (about £1.3 billion) over the next four years on genetic research would have been affected. A large proportion of this money was due to be spent on embryo and stem cell research projects.
Latest votes by MEPs on the uses of EU funding mean that research using human stem cells from embryos will be given priority but funding will also be available for stem cells derived from fetal miscarriage or abortions. The deliberate creation of embryos for research, therapeutic and reproductive cloning will not be funded by the EU.
Sources and References
-
Europe rejects human cloning ban
-
European MPs refuse to outlaw human cloning
-
European Parliament rejects genetics report
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.