By Sam Singson
The InterimIn an unprecedented move, the General Assembly on Dec. 9 struck down a legal committee decision that would have delayed negotiations on a convention against human cloning for two years. Without having to resort to a vote, the assembly agreed to put the issue of cloning back on the agenda for the next session, which begins in September.
Just one month earlier, on Nov. 6, in one of the closest votes in recent history, the assembly’s legal committee voted 80-79, with 15 abstentions, to delay consideration of a cloning treaty, a move requested by Islamic nations.
The General Assembly has been deeply divided on the cloning issue. When the idea of a ban on cloning was first introduced by France and Germany in late 2000, the intention was to negotiate a ban against reproductive cloning only. A coalition of nations, led by Costa Rica and the United States, is seeking to widen this narrow mandate to create a comprehensive ban on all forms of human cloning — meaning against both reproductive and so-called therapeutic cloning.
There is almost universal support in the assembly to ban the cloning of human beings for reproductive purposes. Proponents of the comprehensive ban, however, argue that this is not nearly enough.
In a letter sent to delegates on the evening of Dec. 8, the pro-life and pro-family coalition of non-government organizations at the UN stated, “The only difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning is how the researchers intend to use these tiny human beings – for experimentation or to produce a live-born clone.
“The human embryos created by scientists for ‘therapeutic’ or research cloning are created expressly with the intention of killing them in the process of harvesting their cells for experimentation. Allowing ‘therapeutic’ cloning would violate the human rights of these tiny human beings, as well as violate and erode the human dignity of women and, indeed, of all human beings.”
Jeanne Head, UN representative for National Right to Life in the U.S., has repeatedly warned against a ban that only covered reproductive cloning. She asserts that a convention against the reproductive cloning of human beings, with an allowance for research or therapeutic cloning, would create a “clone and kill” situation in which scientists would be allowed to create cloned embryos to experiment on and, by the same convention, would be required to kill those innocent human lives in their earliest stages of development.
