United Nations Set to Revisit Cloning Issue

The Headquarters of UNESCO in Paris, France

The UN News Centre reports that the “permissibility of therapeutic cloning” will be the focus of a United Nations ethics panel later this month when it considers whether the non-binding United Nations Declaration on Human Cloning (2005), by which Member States were called on to adopt all measures necessary to prohibit all forms of human cloning inasmuch as they are incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life, should be reassessed in light of scientific, ethical, social, political and legal advances.

The General Assembly adopted the Human Cloning Declaration on 8 March 2005, voting 84 in favour, 34 against, 37 abstaining and 36 absent, after a decade of work on reproductive cloning by the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). However, the Declaration makes no distinction between the fundamental and well-known differences that exist between therapeutic cloning and reproductive cloning, and its wording can be interpreted as a UN call for a total ban on all forms of cloning (noted by, among others, the United Kingdom, China, Spain, India, Japan and South Africa). A number of US and European medical and scientific groups expressed dismay over the adoption of the Declaration.

Now the IBC will debate the issue anew at a two-day meeting at UNESCO headquarters in Paris beginning 28 October, noting that some, mainly scientists, are urging a distinction between the reproductive cloning of human beings – which the UN condemned as contrary to human dignity in the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997) – and therapeutic cloning. “Recent technological developments and new prospects for the use of stem cells in the therapy of human diseases have once again raised the issue of adequacy of international regulations governing this research,” an IBC working group set up at the request of UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura said in a report in September.

“The IBC group calls for human reproductive cloning to be banned at the international level by a legally binding convention, while guidelines for regulating human embryo and stem cell research in countries where it is legal should be developed at the international level,” reports the UN News Centre. It adds: “An Observatory Group could be established to new ethical, legal, social, political and scientific developments, and UNESCO should develop specific strategies and materials to promote international discourse on this topic” (UN News Centre, 13/10).

Upon release of a 2007 United Nations University (UNU) report titled “Is Human Reproductive Cloning Inevitable: Future Options for UN Governance”, UNU director AH Zakri said: “A legally-binding global ban on work to create a human clone, coupled with freedom for nations to permit strictly controlled therapeutic research, has the greatest political viability of options available.” Declan’s petition to the UN on therapeutic cloning indeed calls for the establishment of a reasonable timetable for a UN declaration which “would draw a distinction between reproductive and therapeutic cloning while specifically leaving it to UN member states to decide for themselves on therapeutic cloning within a regulation framework”. It has already been signed by 563 scientists and academics, including 24 Nobel Laureates, despite that the vast majority of emails I am sending to scientists and academics on Declan’s behalf are being dumped to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September “Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding”); I have been recording the spamming with statistics in almost every blog for over two months now.

We believe that the momentum is swinging behind Declan's petition and what will be our campaign in support of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning. Yet, things are being made increasingly more difficult for us: from 10 November we will not be able to have a registered pitch to sell The Big Issue - a magazine sold by homeless people throughout the UK on registered street pitches (see blog of 7 October “Letter to the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Big Issue”); we continue to have difficulties with computer bookings and internet access in our local council's Idea Store Whitechapel library (see blog of 13 October “Letter to the Leader of Tower Hamlets Council”); and on 13 October we were sprayed with a hose by a cleaner at 4.50am as we were leaving the place we sleep in at night - the company that owns the building works with charities, according to their website (see the same blog of 13 October ). Oh, well.

Since 7 September we have been sleeping tucked away, about twenty paces from the side entrance of a building, down some twelve steps (prior to that we slept for almost two years in a porch). Relations between us and employees have always been cordial: we were visited by an employee within days, and on three occasions we have been given food. We were quite surprised therefore when last night we found a portable shower unit on wheels, with a clearly visible hose attached to the undercarriage, parked on top of the steps, to one side. We have decided that the next time we are sprayed Declan will seek to lodge a complaint with the City of London Police further to which he will revert back to the European Court of Human Rights for priority under Rule 41 of the Rules of Court. Of course, there is always the option of wetting the area we sleep to ensure we can't bed down. In this instance we may decide to sleep anywhere nearby for the night and, should the police insist we move on, I will take the arrest as I did on 11 September (see blog "I am arrested for breach of the peace"). As I stated in the blog of 13 September "Letter from the City of London Police", I am well prepared to have the legality of such an arrest tested under the Human Rights Act 1998.

The UNESCO press release can be seen here.