ISSUE47: SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2007
network of research and training centres/programmes
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Expect birth of first
human clone soon,
says UNU report
The world community quickly needs to reach a compromise that outlaws reproductive cloning or prepare to protect the rights of cloned individuals from potential abuse, prejudice and discrimination, according to authors of a new policy analysis by UNU Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS).
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 to the international community, says the report: Is Human Reproductive Cloning Inevitable: Future Options for UN Governance.
Virtually every nation opposes human cloning and more than 50 have made such efforts illegal. However, negotiation of an international accord foundered at the UN in 2005 due to disagreement over research (or therapeutic) cloning.
"Human reproductive cloning could profoundly impact humanity," says UNU Rector Konrad Osterwalder, Rector of UNU. "This report offers a plain language analysis of the opportunities, challenges and options before us – a firm and thoughtful base from which the international community can revisit the issue before science overtakes policy."
Without an international prohibition, human reproductive cloning accomplished in certain countries could be judged perfectly legal by the International Court of Justice, warn UNU-IAS co-authors Brendan Tobin, Chamundeeswari Kuppuswamy, Darryl Macer, Mihaela Serbulea.
“Failure to outlaw reproductive cloning means it is just a matter of time until cloned individuals share the planet,” says barrister Mr. Tobin of the Irish Center for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway. “If failure to compromise continues, the world community must accept responsibility and ensure that any cloned individual receives full human rights protection. It will also need to embark on an extensive awareness building and sensitivity program to ensure that the wider society treats clones with respect and ensure they are protected against prejudice, abuse or discrimination.”
There is almost universal international consensus on the desirability of banning reproductive cloning based in part on religious and moral grounds, but mostly on concerns about underdeveloped technologies producing clones with serious deformities or degenerative diseases, Mr. Tobin adds. As technologies advance and possibilities of success increase, the current consensus is likely to erode and with it the possibility of securing a ban on reproductive cloning.
According to the UNU report, the widest international consensus would be achieved around an agreement that prevents progress towards full reproductive cloning but authorizes strictly controlled therapeutic cloning to prevent the uncontrolled production and destruction of embryos.
Failure to deal with the cloning issue reflects on "the credibility of the UN institution itself and its capacity to respond to society’s need for competent leadership," says the report.
Proponents of research cloning for regenerative medicine say it offers great hope of producing replacement tissue without the fear of rejection, that it offers a potential cure for millions of people suffering common diseases of the industrialized world – diabetes, stroke, spinal injury, and neuro-degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
Opponents view research cloning as the unethical production and destruction of living embryos to produce stem cells upon which such therapies are based. The clash of positions led to a compromise non-binding UN Declaration on Cloning.
There have been no substantiated claims of cloned human embryos grown into fetal stages and beyond but such an historic event is not far off, most experts agree.
Clones have been achieved with mice, sheep, pigs, cows and dogs and U.S. researchers last summer accomplished the first cloning of a primate – a rhesus monkey embryo cloned from adult cells and then grown to generate stem cells.
© 2007 United Nations University