 |
|
The committee voted 71 to 35 with 43 abstentions in favor of the proposal put forward by Honduras and backed by the US.
|
UNITED
NATIONS, February 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) –
The UN General Assembly’s Legal Committee voted Friday, February 18,
in favor of a declaration calling on governments to prohibit all forms
of human cloning, including techniques used in research on human stem
cells.
The
committee voted 71 to 35 with 43 abstentions in favor of the proposal
put forward by Honduras and backed by Washington, reported Reuters.
The
declaration called on UN members to adopt urgent legislation outlawing
all cloning practices “as they are incompatible with human dignity
and the protection of human life.”
The
measure now goes to the full 191-nation assembly.
The
vote capped four years of deliberations on a global ban on the cloning
of human beings.
The
discussions began with a 2001 proposal to draft a binding global
treaty banning human cloning, which probably now will not occur.
Opponents
of the measure, like Britain, Belgium and Singapore, said the text
would have no impact on their practice of co-called therapeutic stem
cell research.
At
the heart of the debate was medical research relying on therapeutic
cloning, in which human embryos are cloned to obtain the cells used in
the studies and are later discarded.
Many
scientists say the technique holds out the hope of a cure for some 100
million people with such conditions as Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes
and spinal cord injuries.
But
the United States, Costa Rica and other governments have argued that
they view this type of research, for whatever purpose, as the taking
of human life.
With
the support of President George Bush, the US House of Representatives
voted in 2001 to
ban human cloning by a vote of 265-162.
Islam
completely prohibits human cloning. (Click
here to read Islam’s stances on animal and human cloning).
Welcomed
“This
is a powerful message to the world that this morally questionable
procedure is outside the bounds of acceptable experimentation,”
Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights
Institute, one of the main NGOs involved in the negotiation, said in a
statement e-mailed to IslamOnline.net.
“By
adopting this declaration, the international community is united in
condemning all human cloning as exploitative and unethical. This
should encourage similar bans in legislatures around the world
including in the US Senate,” said Ruse.
C-FAM
is a non-profit organization designed to serve the needs of United
Nations delegates, extra-governmental and non-governmental
organizations, missions and consulates.
It
intends to fulfill an educational need to inform the public at large
regarding family and human rights issues.
The
same position was echoed by a coalition of US groups opposed to
abortion rights.
“This
declaration represents a significant step forward in advancing respect
for human life,” Reuters quoted the coalition as saying.
“Cloning
opponents welcomed the UN's resolution and look forward to
member-states fulfilling their international obligations.”
Non-binding
Nonetheless,
the declaration drew fire from pro-cloning countries, such as Britain.
“This
is a weak, non-binding political statement. The number of states that
failed to support it is greater than the number that backed it,”
said British UN Ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry.
“We
have lost the opportunity for an international ban on the abhorrent
prospect of reproductive cloning because of the intransigence of
states whose action serves only to hold back medical research”, he
argued.
Singaporean
Ambassador Vanu Gopala Menon, who also voted against the declaration
regretted that a common objective of prohibiting human cloning “was
hijacked in a misguided bid to widen this ban to include important
research.”
Before
adopting the text, the assembly's legal committee rejected amendments
by Belgium that would have made the declaration more acceptable to
stem cell research supporters.
Countries
were divided mainly over whether to protect “human life” or the
“human being.”
Costa
Rica, Uganda, the United States and others who sought to ban all forms
of human cloning, supported “human life.”
Countries
including Belgium, Singapore and the United Kingdom, who wanted to ban
only cloning that would result in born human beings, insisted on
protecting the “human being,” which according to some
international legal documents would protect only those already born.
You
may also read”
