SCI/TECH: U.N. Abandons Idea of Anti-Cloning Treaty, page 1

The United Nations has abandoned any effort to draft a treaty the would ban human cloning. A settlement may have been reached for a weaker declaration rather than a ban. This was a direct rebuff of President Bush�s call for a total ban on the cloning of humans. While there is near unanimous consent that baby cloning should be outlawed, many countries are unsure of the impact on stem cell research. The proposed declaration would be non-binding.

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. diplomats abandoned contentious efforts to draft a treaty that would outlaw human cloning and will likely settle for a weaker declaration that won't seek a comprehensive ban, officials said.

The last-minute agreement on Thursday appeared to be a major blow to President Bush, who had called for a total ban on cloning when he spoke before the U.N. General Assembly in August.

While there is near universal support among the United Nations 191 members to ban reproductive cloning � the cloning of babies � countries have wrestled over whether to allow cloning for stem cell and other research.

For more than a year, the General Assembly's legal committee has been wrestling with rival cloning resolutions. One, offered by Costa Rica, calls for the drafting of a treaty banning all forms of cloning. The other, from Belgium, would allow some cloning for science.

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This is a very sticky ethical area. While I am a huge supporter of stem cell research, the idea of cloning humans makes me uneasy to put it mildly. Now a cloned human would be a different person than the original at least from a personality / behavior standpoint. Its our life experiences that makes us unique. What worries me the most is the cloning of a life to serve as an organ bank for another.