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U.N. Proposal Would End Work Using Human Embryos

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 26

The United States today proposed a “global and comprehensive ban” on human cloning and all experimentation involving human embryos. The announcement marked an expansion in the Bush administration’s campaign to restrict the uses of human embryos for scientific and medical purposed.

“Human cloning is an enormously troubling development in biotechnology,” U.S delegate Carolyn L. Willson said at a meeting of the U.N.’s Committee on an International Convention Against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings.  Such cloning, she said, could lead to a future in which “human beings are born for spare body parts, and children are engineered to fit eugenic specification.”

Scientists have not yet demonstrated the ability to clone a human being, but one U.S. biotechnology company claims to have cloned human embryos consisting of a few cells.

Although there is broad support at the United Nations for a ban on the cloning of babies, delegates, from Europe to Asia today cautioned that it would be unwise to stifle research on cloned embryos, a promising field that might yield medical breakthroughs.

“It would be a mistake to close the door to future scientific and technological progress which could save human lives,” said Yoshiyuki Motomura, Japan’s representative at the meeting – though he opposed reproductive cloning.

Stem cells harvested from cloned human embryos are capable of growing into human tissue, and thus hold out the promise of replacing damaged human organs.  Many scientist have sought to persuade the Bush administration and Congress to permit such research, know as “therapeutic cloning,” and to outlaw only “reproductive cloning.”

“It’s bad enough that the administration would seek to impose its views on the American people, let alone the entire world,” Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said after the meeting.  “We need to keep these avenue of research open.”

In August, France and Germany proposed a global treaty that would prohibit the cloning of babies but permit the production of human embryos for scientific research. But the United States said it did not go far enough and presented an alternative proposal today.  The General Assembly is to decide in August whether to begin negotiations on a treaty.

Willson said that “therapeutic or experimental cloning”could lead to an international black market in embryos.

“Implantation of cloned embryos would take place out of sight,” she said.  “Once begun, an illicit clonal pregnancy would be virtually impossible to detect and, if detected, governments would be unlikely to compel the pregnancy to be aborted or severely penalize the pregnant mother.”