Academies lobby on cloning

The world's science academies were urged yesterday (August 30) to reinforce their support for an international treaty on cloning that does not outlaw cell nuclear replacement for therapeutic purposes.The United Nations (UN) General Assembly is expected to revisit the vexed issue of a convention on human cloning this fall, with a vote tentatively scheduled for October 21–22. Ahead of that meeting, the InterAcademy Panel (IAP), an umbrella body for national science academies, recently called on its member groups to step up pressure on their national governments.The IAP, based in Trieste, Italy, has asked its member organizations to send a statement to appropriate officials saying that policy on cloning for research or therapeutic purposes should be left to individual countries.The IAP statement on the UN cloning debate was first sent out last year, signed by 67 of its 90 member organizations. The group has sent it out once again in order to make sure governments get the message, said Yves Quéré, from the French Académie des Sciences and co-chair of the IAP executive committee. "We had the impression that it should be repeated," he told The Scientist. "We asked all the academies who signed to reconsider their pressure on their own governments."Britain's Royal Society backed the call with pubic statements of its own yesterday. Richard Gardner, chair of the Royal Society working group on stem cell research and cloning, said that if a convention is passed that bans all forms of human cloning, the United Kingdom and other countries that permit therapeutic cloning will not sign up to it. "To effectively stop cowboy cloners claiming that their work on human reproductive cloning is acceptable because it is not outlawed throughout the world, a UN convention must be passed that all countries are willing to endorse," Gardner said in a statement.He argued that a UN convention that makes a distinction between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning will help guide countries to pass effective legislation. "It should be noted that the United States, unlike the UK, has still not outlawed reproductive cloning because of attempts to include therapeutic cloning in the ban," he said.The United Kingdom recently granted its first license for a group to perform therapeutic cloning. At the time, Human Genetics Alert, an anti-cloning group, said the decision was made to influence the UN's decision. "The research will have no scientific or medical benefit and is cruelly raising people's hopes," said David King, director of the group. The UN's debates on cloning in the recent years have been marked by bitter division, fundamental disagreements, and wrangling. Last year, countries rallied around two proposals—one from Costa Rica, supported by the United States, which called for a total ban, and another tabled by Belgium, which urged a ban on reproductive, but not therapeutic, cloning.The United Kingdom backed the Belgian proposal. "We think support was evenly divided for the two rival motions—the Cost Rican and the Belgian," Bob Ward, spokesman for the Royal Society, told The Scientist. "But we don't know how countries will line up this time, which is why we want them to be aware that there is this very solid consensus among the international scientific community that there should be a ban on reproductive cloning across the world, but that individual countries should be able to make up their own mind on therapeutic cloning."The Royal Society is also worried because it isn't sure to what extent scientists realize that the UN is going to debate this issue now again, he said. "That's why we're trying to raise consciousness among both the scientific community and policymakers who will be responsible for the approach of various governments."

Academies lobby on cloning

Ahead of a UN debate in October, science academies support therapeutic cloning

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