Dim Chance for Global Cloning Ban
A Human Rights Issue
Globalizing Research
Where Scientists Call the Shots
Special Report
WASHINGTON, June 2, 2004 — Deep divisions within the international community, fed by religious views, economic interests and U.S. domestic politics, are hampering efforts to outlaw human reproductive cloning worldwide. Nearly all countries agree that reproductive cloning, or the creation of an identical human being through asexual reproductive methods, should be banned. But there has been little progress on adopting international agreements outlawing the procedure. >>
WASHINGTON, June 2, 2004 — As in much of the rest of the world, the 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, forced Europe's legislators, bioethicists and religious leaders to deal with the topic of human cloning. When Italian fertility expert Severino Antinori, along with American physiologist Panayiotis Zavos, declared, the next year, that they would help infertile couple to have children through cloning, the continent's public policy makers responded quickly. >>
WASHINGTON, June 2, 2004 — In February of this year, the latest breakthrough in the field of stem cell research was announced in South Korea by scientists who had successfully cloned human embryos and produced a viable stem cell line from them. Hailed with both interest and alarm, this advance increased interest in the rapidly-growing Asian biotechnology sector and heightened the fears of scientists and ethicists worldwide that developments in stem cell research would be applied to the pursuit of human cloning technology. >>
TEL AVIV, June 2, 2004 — Six years ago Dr. Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor boarded a flight in Israel destined for the United States. In his baggage was an insulated metal cylinder that contained human embryos left from in-vitro fertilization treatments carried out in the gynecology department of Rambam hospital in Haifa, Israel. Itskovitz delivered the embryos to Dr. James Thomson at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. About one year later, the first human stem cell lines were produced from these embryos. >>