Thursday January 23, 2003
GERMANY INCHING TOWARD REAL CLONING BAN
French support for research cloning remains solid
BERLIN, January 23, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Germany's position on human and therapeutic cloning continues to evolve. As reported by LifeSite last week, the powerful Green Party is now aligned with Christian Democrats and Bavaria's Christian Social Union in opposing therapeutic cloning as well as "reproductive" human cloning, which means cloning someone for birth.
Now, Edelgard Bulmahn, the Education & Research Minister, will host a conference in May to accelerate negotiations for an "internationally enforceable ban" at the United Nations. Between the lines, this means making a greater effort to find a position that the United States will support.
Until recently, Germany and France led the opposition to U.S. efforts to ban both human and therapeutic research cloning. Bulmahn himself said last week Germany may have to soften its position to win U.S. support.
In France, however, Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei told Le Parisien that his government would make it a "crime against human dignity" to clone a human being -- part of the Europe-wide emotional reaction to the Raelian cult's recent publicity stunts. However, Mattei's posturing did not extend to cloning human embryos for experimentation and destruction.
For local coverage see:
http://www.dw-world.de/english/0,3367,1446_A_743693_1_A,00.html
For related coverage:
GERMANY CONSIDERS BROADER CLONING BAN
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/jan/03011606.html
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