In Bush win, UN urges ban of all human cloning
UNITED NATIONS -- The UN General Assembly yesterday urged governments to ban all human cloning, including the cloning of human embryos for stem-cell research, in a divided vote that handed a symbolic victory to the administration of President Bush.
Capping four years of contentious debate, the 191-nation assembly voted 84 to 34, with 37 abstentions, to approve a nonbinding statement on cloning.
The United States did not play a public role in promoting the statement. But it had worked behind the scenes, along with US antiabortion groups, to obtain thecall for a ban on all cloning.
The measure was proposed by Honduras and generally supported by predominantly Roman Catholic countries, in line with Pope John Paul II's condemnation of human cloning. It was generally opposed by nations where stem-cell research is being pursued.
Unusually, the United States and Britain, traditional staunch allies in the United Nations, were on opposite sides of the issue, and Britain condemned the ''intransigence" of nations opposed to cloning for medical reasons.
Many Islamic nations were among those abstaining, on grounds there was no UN consensus on the hot-button issue of whether stem-cell research was a valid medical pursuit or the destruction of human life.
Opponents said the text was not legally binding and would have no impact on their scientists' pursuit of stem cell research.
At the heart of the debate was so-called therapeutic cloning, in which human embryos are cloned to obtain stem cells used in medical studies and later discarded.
Many scientists, backed by governments including Belgium, Britain, Singapore, and China, say the technique offers hope for a cure to some 100 million people with such conditions as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, diabetes, or spinal cord injuries.
But the United States, Costa Rica, and Italy, as well as antiabortion groups, argued that this type of research, for whatever purpose, constitutes the taking of life.
The UN debate began with a 2001 proposal by France and Germany for a binding global treaty banning the cloning of human beings, a plan that had broad international backing.
But that effort failed last year after the Bush administration fought to broaden the ban to all cloning of human embryos, including therapeutic cloning.
The assembly's treaty-writing legal committee, deeply divided, abandoned the idea of a treaty and decided instead to pursue a nonbinding declaration.
