The U.N. Legal Committee Votes
to Prohibit All Forms of Human Cloning
REUTERS: UNITED NATIONS - A deeply divided U.N. General Assembly committee adopted Friday a nonbinding declaration calling on governments to prohibit all forms of human cloning including techniques used in research on human stem cells.[thanks Art Caplan]The assembly’s legal committee voted 71 to 35 with 43 abstentions to adopt the nonbinding proposal put forward by Honduras and backed by the Bush administration but opposed by advocates of stem cell studies.
The measure now goes to the full 191-nation assembly.
Before adopting the text, the assembly’s legal committee rejected a series of amendments by Belgium that would have softened the declaration to make it more acceptable to stem cell research supporters."