UN to debate worldwide bans
This week the UN will debate proposals to place a worldwide ban on aspects of embryonic cloning. There are two major proposals on the table and world opinion seems to be split in two between them.
The first proposal by Costa Rica is strongly advocated by the Bush led US government. This would make it illegal for any country to clone embryos for any reason. The US wants this worldwide ban, matching the ethical position of it's president that any cloning and destruction of the embryo is a destruction of life and must be stopped.
The second proposal put forward by Belguim and supported by most of Europe (including the UK) would allow the cloning of embryos, but make the maturing of those embyyos beyond the 14 day point (about pin sized embryo) illegal. This would allow for embryos to be cloned to provide genetic material for curing deseases or for genrerating embryonic stem cells, but make human cloning illegal.
There are many serious arguements for both sides of the debate. The Uk strongly supports the second case as it points out that it has already passed laws mimicing this. The arguement it takes, supported by the EU is that surely it should be up to individual countries to decide whether they want to allow cloning for medical cases, but that human cloning should be outlawed before rogue scientists clone humans in a country with no laws against it (such as the US at the moment). They feel particlularly angry that the US is trying to push worldwide laws to avoid having to implement domestic laws and risk political backlash from right to choice groups.
Even if the US gets its way though and a total ban is proposed, a quorate of countries will need to ratify the ban for it to come into effect. Will any country which does not agree with it actually ratify it? And even if enough countries ratify it to bring it into force will counrties which do not agree with it implement it? After all the US refuses to implement the Kyoto agreement and that was ratified by 90% of countries representing 92% of world population.
It will be interesting to see how the debate goes thois week and see the final votes.
Paul.