Caribbean nations back proposed UN ban on therapeutic cloning

Friday, November 7, 2003

NEW YORK, USA: The United Nations today narrowly voted to postpone for two years debate on competing human cloning resolutions that had divided the General Assembly, including a total ban of therapeutic cloning. Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St Kitts and St Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines (represented by the Caribbean Academy of Sciences), Dominican Republic and the United States are all backing the ban on therapeutic cloning.

Therapeutic cloning involves the cloning of cells to develop medical treatments. It is hoped that the techniques will one day allow doctors to "grow" new organs from a patient's own cells for a transplant process which would cut the risk of rejection. 

In an 80 to 79 ballot with 15 abstentions, the Assembly's Legal Committee approved a procedural motion from Iran, backed by 56 mostly Islamic States, that effectively put off a showdown on the two resolutions. Although both versions ban all human reproductive cloning, they differ on language referring to the treatment of human cells for other than reproduction.

The vote in the Legal Committee means neither resolution will get to the General Assembly for at least two years.

A Belgian draft, submitted with 13 co-sponsors, while banning all human reproductive cloning, calls upon States "to take action to control other forms of human cloning by adopting a ban or imposing a moratorium or regulating them by means of national legislation."

A draft sponsored by Costa Rica and 44 other countries bans all forms of human cloning.

Lord May, president of the British Royal Society, said: "The convention proposed by Belgium is consistent with an Inter Academy Panel statement signed by 66 of the world's scientific academies, including the Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences. It is therefore surprising that the United States is ignoring this advice and instead is campaigning at the United Nations for a blanket worldwide ban on therapeutic cloning. 

"It is particularly ironic that countries such as the United States should be so keen to ban therapeutic cloning as they have so far failed to introduce national legislation against it, or even human reproductive cloning."

However Lord May did back the plans to ban cloning of human beings. "There is widespread agreement among scientific and medical experts and the public that human reproductive cloning should be banned across the world, yet only 30 countries have laws against it. Governments should now act to outlaw the cowboy cloners."

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