UNITED NATIONS URGED TO ENACT GLOBAL CLONING BAN; TREATY WOULD REGULATE SCIENTIFIC LABS WORLDWIDE, MANDATE UN INSPECTIONS |
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UN BOSS ANNAN URGED TO INTERVENE
QUESTIONS:
WHO WOULD ENFORCE IT?
WHO WOULD MONITOR THE UN?
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Germany and France have launched a
campaign for a U.N. treaty to ban human cloning, which they say is
unacceptable and incompatible with human dignity.
The U.N. ambassadors from the two nations presented
Secretary-General Kofi Annan with a letter requesting that their
initiative be included on the agenda of the new General Assembly
session, which begins next month.
Germany and France also circulated a proposed resolution
Wednesday asking the General Assembly to create a special committee
to draft a legally binding international convention banning human
cloning.
"The German-French initiative is aimed at internationally
banning the reproductive cloning of human beings and at
establishing ethical barriers against related research," said a
joint statement from the U.N. missions of the two countries, which
delivered the letter to Annan on Tuesday.
The European neighbors are also embarking on diplomatic efforts
to win global support for their initiative, the statement said.
Last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to
make all human cloning illegal and punishable by up to 10 years in
prison and $1 million in fines.
In Washington on Tuesday, researchers told a meeting of
scientists they would try to clone human beings soon despite
widespread ethical objections and arguments that it is medically
risky.
"The cloning plans are inhuman and irresponsible," Germany's
research minister, Edelgard Bulmahn, said in an interview with the
Berliner Zeitung daily being published Thursday.
"Freedom of research finds its borders where human dignity is
affected," she added, predicting that the chances of passing a
worldwide ban are good.
Paris, Berlin press crusade for global cloning ban
| Updated: Thu, Aug 09 12:07 PM EDT |
By Brian Love
PARIS (Reuters) - France's health minister stepped
up pressure for a worldwide ban on human cloning Thursday
with a blistering attack on Italian doctor Severino Antinori
who wants to produce the world's first "photocopy" babies.
Bernard Kouchner, raising the stakes after an urgent
Franco-German appeal to the United Nations (News - Websites)for a global ban on
cloning humans, lambasted the controversial doctor's plan to
begin cloning before year-end and said he should be struck off
the medical register in Italy.
"It is, very simply, morally unacceptable to create life
while hijacking its very meaning," Kouchner said.
"We have to ban the photocopying of human beings now," said
Kouchner, the outspoken founder of medical aid charity Medecins
Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) and a former U.N.
administrator in Kosovo.
"The Italian medical profession would do honorably if it
immediately prohibited Mr. Antinori from practicing medicine in
his country," he told France's Le Monde newspaper.
FRANCE, GERMANY SEEK WORLDWIDE BAN
France and Germany, alarmed at the prospect that Antinori
or others could soon produce human clones, have jointly written
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to urge action during the
coming session of the 189-nation U.N. General Assembly, which
opens next month.
They want the assembly to set up a special committee that
would draft an international treaty on the matter.
"The objective is an international and effective ban on the
reproductive cloning of humans and the creation of a globally
applicable ethical boundary for the relevant areas of
research," a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
U.N. officials said a decision to add the matter to the
General Assembly's agenda likely would be made September
12.
"The secretary-general is going to distribute our proposal
tomorrow to all U.N. member nations," French U.N. envoy Yves
Doutriaux said in New York.
If all went smoothly, the preparatory work would require
two years and negotiations on a future global convention could
begin in 2003, Doutriaux told Reuters.
"This is a matter that concerns the whole of humanity,"
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said
Wednesday. "Action has to be taken to prevent the dangers and
unpredictable consequences this poses to human kind."
ALARM AND CONTROVERSY
Paris and Berlin hope the debate will consolidate mounting
concern among governments tortured by the pace at which science
and genetic engineering in particular are paving the way to a
"Brave New World" with no controls on the risks of excess.
But while a U.N. debate could be launched within months, it
could take years to draft a treaty that wins universal support
-- far longer than Antinori intends to wait before launching
his experiment.
The Italian doctor says he has up to 700 couples willing to
take part in a cloning program which he could start as early as
November, and he is reportedly ready to do his work on a ship
in international waters if hindered by national restrictions.
Antinori, who grabbed worldwide attention by helping a
woman of 62 to have a child in 1994 and who is now working with
Panos Zavos, an American fertility specialist, presented his
plans to a U.S. audience in Washington Tuesday.
Many governments have recently tried to adapt their laws to
clamp down on cloning, though many scientists believe excessive
restrictions could limit cell clone research that could lead to
new cures for some diseases.
Antinori, however, has gone beyond the idea of cell cloning
for purely therapeutic ends and raised the debate to fever
pitch with ideas of creating embryos that could be implanted in
a woman's uterus to produce full-blown clone babies.
"If somebody wants to do something with such zeal, without
any regard for ethical limits, then it's not something that can
easily be prevented," Ottmar Wiestlar, a German neurologist and
genetic scientist at Bonn university, told German radio.
Antinori outlined his plans to a panel of the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences which is gathering information for a report
by the end of next month on whether the United States should
impose a moratorium on human cloning.
Kouchner said he was not surprised by the doctor's
declarations, but was stunned by the "cowardly" absence of
forthright condemnation by others from the medical community.
"I simply fail to fathom how distinguished scientists of
the kind present in Washington found nothing better to do than
talk of the complexities or risks of such an enterprise," he
said.(30)
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