Efforts to achieve agreement in the United Nations to ban human reproductive cloning have foundered, at least for the time being, because of disagreement about the scope of the ban (see reports in Nov 16 Lancet, p. 1574 and Nov 15 Science, p. 1316). A group of 37 nations spearheaded by the United States wants the ban to encompass so-called “therapeutic cloning” as well as reproductive cloning. However, 20 other countries, led by France and Germany, oppose this approach on the grounds that, as there is no international consensus about therapeutic cloning research (which is currently legal in several countries including the UK, Singapore and The Netherlands, and by private companies in the US), argument on this issue would delay or defeat the aim of banning reproductive cloning. Indeed, such a delay is exactly what has happened. The UN working group on cloning will not now make a decision until late 2003.