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UN Approves Declaration Banning all Human Cloning

UN Pro-Life and Pro-Family Coalition of Nongovernmental Organizations strong General Assembly support

The UN General Assembly adopted a Declaration today calling on nations to enact legislation to `'prohibit all forms of human cloning." By a vote of 84 to 34, the Declaration received more support in the General Assembly than when it passed in the 6th Committee two weeks ago. The measure sets an international standard that humans should not be created through cloning for any purpose, placing human life as a priority over scientific experimentation.

The decision ends over three years of deadlock caused by countries seeking approval for cloning research. Belgium, the United Kingdom, Singapore and other countries that hope to profit from cloning humans opposed a total ban, and declared they would defy the international moral agreement.

The topic was originally introduced at the UN by pro-cloning countries to gain implicit international approval for so-called "therapeutic cloning" (creating human clones to experiment upon and kill). In 2002, these countries requested that a treaty be drafted to ban only so-called "reproductive cloning." The countries insisted that human clones are for research only and should not be allowed to survive.

The pro-cloning countries lost support as Costa Rica took the lead, along with the U.S. and pro-life groups, to educate countries that cloning would violate the human rights of both cloned embryos and women. The embryos would be created and destroyed at the whim of scientists. Women would be treated as commodities to harvest their eggs.

Additionally, adult stem cells, the use of which is ethical, are already doing what cloning only promises by providing near-miraculous treatments for patients with a variety of illnesses, such as Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, heart failure, cancer and blindness.

The Declaration, introduced by Honduras, also calls on Member States to introduce measures to "prevent exploitation of women." Delegates from developing countries feared that women from poor countries would be targeted as a source for the large number of women's eggs that would be needed to support these "egg farms." The procedure by which eggs are extracted from these vulnerable women is painful and dangerous to their lives and health.

An additional 6 countries stated that they supported the Declaration but missed the vote.

The news was highly praised by pro-life groups internationally as a considerable breakthrough, uniting the international community in condemning human cloning as exploitative and unethical.

sj

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