Coalition for Advancement of Med Research Responds to the Coming UN Fracas on Cloning

Art forwarded this to us:

Today, with less than a majority of countries, the United Nations passed a non-binding declaration seeking to ban all forms of human cloning, including therapeutic cloning used to cure diseases. Over the past three years, the Bush Administration, along with the government of Costa Rica, has been urging the U.N. to pass a full treaty banning cloning. But in the end, only a non-binding declaration was passed today by the global body.

The non-binding declaration is a toothless attempt to ban all forms of human cloning. Unfortunately, all countries could have agreed upon a treaty banning reproductive cloning, which seeks to create babies. But since the Administration wanted to push for a broader ban to include cloning of stem cells which could be used for research and therapeutic purposes, the global body was only able to pass a watered-down document, which in the end does neither.

Since the declaration is unenforceable by law, countries will continue to pursue therapeutic cloning research which seeks to develop stem cells to cure some of life’s most debilitating diseases.