A working group of the General Assembly of the United Nations appears to have reached an impasse in attempts to reach international agreement on a treaty to ban reproductive cloning (see
report from Reuters new agency). The problem is that a group of nations led by Costa Rica, and including the United States, wants the ban to include so-called “therapeutic cloning”, also known as somatic cell nuclear replacement, a technique that some scientists think has promise as a means of producing embryonic stem cells genetically matched to those of a patient needing treatment. Other nations, including the UK, want the ban to be limited to reproductive cloning. Therapeutic cloning research is currently legal in the UK, subject to licence by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The UN General Assembly’s legal committee is now charged with trying to decide how to proceed, but it seems unlikely that the deadlock can be resolved. Meanwhile the UK’s Royal Society has issued a
statement supporting a complete ban on reproductive cloning but favouring the continuation of research on the use of cloning techniques for therapeutic purposes. The statement has been endorsed by a total of around 60 national and regional academies of science worldwide.