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19 European nations sign ban on human cloning
Britain, Germany not among signatories
January 12, 1998
Web posted at: 8:00 p.m. EST (0100 GMT)PARIS (CNN) -- Nineteen European nations on Monday signed an agreement to prohibit the cloning of humans.
Representatives from 19 members of the Council of Europe signed a protocol that would commit their countries to ban by law "any intervention seeking to create human beings genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead." It rules out any exception to the ban, even in the case of a completely sterile couple.
"At a time when occasional voices are being raised to assert the acceptability of human cloning and even to put it more rapidly into practice, it is important for Europe solemnly to declare its determination to defend human dignity against the abuse of scientific techniques," Council Secretary-General Daniel Tarchys said.
The text, which is to become a part of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, would permit cloning of cells for research purposes.
CNN's Margaret Lowrie reports
2 min. 3 sec VXtreme video
The accord will become binding on the signatories as soon as it has been ratified in five states.
Countries signing are: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey.
Britain and Germany -- two of Europe's biggest nations -- did not sign the protocol.
Germany claims the measure is weaker than a current German law that forbids all research on human embryos -- a reaction to Nazi genetic engineering experiments.
Britain, where scientists are at the forefront of cloning, has a strong tradition of defending the freedoms of scientific research.
French President Jacques Chirac, at a conference of Europe's national ethics committees, said:
"Nothing will be resolved by banning certain practices in one country if scientists and doctors can simply work on them elsewhere.
"It is only at the international level that we will be able to prohibit cloning and genetic manipulation that could alter the characteristics of the human race," he said in opening the conference.
Fears about the dangers of genetic engineering are on the rise as cloning, the exact reproduction of a living being via the replication of the individual's genetic structure, appears to be at hand.
Dolly Researchers in Scotland ignited the debate over cloning last March with the announcement that they had cloned a sheep, which they named Dolly.
Britain's Independent on Sunday newspaper said that experiments in human cloning could begin in the United Kingdom as early as next year.
Richard Seed, a Harvard University-educated physicist, caused an uproar last week when he said he was ready to set up a clinic to clone human babies and predicted that as many as 200,000 human clones a year would be produced once his process was perfected. He boasted that he could produce a human clone within 18 months.
In reaction to this, President Clinton on Saturday called for a five-year ban on human cloning experiments.
Correspondent Margaret Lowrie, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
CNN Community:
Related stories:
- Clinton stresses urgent need for human-cloning ban - January 10, 1998
- Opposition to human cloning will 'blow over,' scientist says - January 7, 1998
- Report: Cloned sheep has human gene - July 24, 1997
- Scientist who cloned sheep: Cloning humans would be 'inhuman' - March 12, 1997
- Clinton bars federal funds for human cloning research - March 4, 1997
Related sites:
Note: Pages will open in a new browser window
- Council of Europe Web Site
- National Public Radio
- Human cloning plans - from "All Things Considered"
- Genetics and Ethics - Biomedical Ethics Unit, McGill University
- National Bioethics Advisory Committee Homepage
- Roslin Institute Online
- Society, Religion and Technology Project, Church of Scotland
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.
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