UN Votes Against Cloning

The General Assembly of the United Nations on 8 March 05 called on all the nations of the world to ban all forms of human cloning. 84 countries voted in favour of a ban, while only 34 voted against it.

Friday Fax reported: "British Ambassador Emrys Jones Parry expressed the UK's defiance of the Declaration, stating that "the UK government announced this week more than $1 billion of funding over the next three years for biotechnology research, including stem cell research.

"The UK is pressing ahead with destructive embryo research despite a recent medical scandal over its developing trade in Romanian embryos.

"To prevent the exploitation of women, the UK does not permit payment to donors for their eggs. However, to supplement the shortage of eggs in British fertility clinics, the British Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has allowed UK clinics to import Romanian embryos, despite credible reports that Romanian women are paid high amounts for their eggs."

A proposal in Italy to overturn restrictions there was decisively defeated in a referendum in June. The law limits the number of embryos that can be created to three, forbids sperm or egg donation from outside the couple and prohibits scientific research using embryos.

Josephine Quintavalle (CORE), sums up the situation in Britain:

"In recent months the HFEA has issued one licence after another for destructive embryo research, each more controversial than the last, and frequently involving cell nuclear replacement, which is of course the process used for cloning. Embryos will be created with genetic material from two mothers and a father, or from just one mother with no sperm involved. These developments have shocked the nation and the recent YouGov opinion poll shows that the majority of the public is not in favour of the deliberate creation of human embryos for research purposes, even though sadly they do not object strongly to the use of embryos left over from infertility treatment. This is all taking place in the international context of a world which is more opposed than ever to human cloning, and reveals yet again how seriously the UK is out of step with the moral thinking of most other countries. The sad fact too is that most of the promises of the embryonic stem cell and cloning lobby in the UK are fuller of hype than hope, a truth which even Professor Robert Winston has at last acknowledged."

The deadline for responses to the Government's public consultation is 25th November 2005.