UNITED NATIONS—The legal committee of the UN's General Assembly concluded the year's second day of debating whether to ban human cloning on Friday (October 22) without taking a vote, leaving the issue to percolate further in the minds of the deeply divided—and still undecided—member states.
On Friday, Susan Moore, the US Special Advisor, addressed the committee and reiterated the country's position in favor of the total cloning ban. Therapeutic cloning turns "nascent human life into a resource or commodity to be mined and exploited, eroding the sense of worth and dignity of the individual," she said. "For this reason, a partial ban that prohibits reproductive cloning but permits therapeutic, research, or experimental cloning is unacceptable to the United States and many other countries."
The UN has been trying to reach agreement on a convention for more than 2 years. On Thursday (October 21), UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced that ...
