This week's BioNews reports on a United Nations subcommittee, currently meeting in New York City, which is seeking to pass a worldwide ban on human reproductive cloning. Since the announcement of the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep in February 1997, many nations, as well as regional and international organisations, have banned or denounced the creation of a human Dolly. But should the UN be getting involved in the cloning issue?
The original idea for a worldwide ban on reproductive cloning came from the French and German governments last summer. Severino Antinori and Panos Zavos, along with the Raelian cult spin-off Clonaid, had been in the media spotlight for many months following their announcements that they intended to produce the first cloned baby. Many were concerned that there seemed no way of stopping these teams in their quest for a clone and a UN ban was mooted as the only way to prevent them. So, unlike many international cloning prohibitions so far, which have been largely declaratory, the UN committee's aim is to develop a law with criminal sanctions. But is a UN ban going to stop the likes of Severino Antinori and Clonaid?
It has been estimated that a UN ban could take years to come into force. It's already taken a year, from the time of the French and German government letters, for the legal committee dealing with the issue to begin 'laying the groundwork' for the ban. If those who are determined to carry out human cloning are serious and are not persuaded by safety concerns to postpone their efforts, any United Nations ban is likely to come after the first attempts at cloning. (Indeed, if we are to believe Clonaid, a woman is already pregnant after treatment in South Korea.) Even if the cloning ban is put into place in time, it is likely to be the result of a huge amount of time and resources - all in order to stop the activities of two small teams of unproven scientific ability. This approach seems rather like a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
But besides the potential waste of UN resources, the cloning ban could lead to a more damaging outcome. The United States has already pushed for a more restrictive ban to include cloning for research as well as for reproductive purposes and other countries are sympathetic. If an initial intention to stop a few mavericks were to end up in an international ban on using cloned embryos for research, it would be a disaster for science and for the millions of patients such research could help.
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