Despite efforts by Costa Rica (and the US) on the one hand and Belgium on the other, the UN will not be making any decision this year on a treaty related to embryonic cloning. The UN shelved both of the draft treaties that had been up for consideration on the issue.
Costa Rica had offered a treatythat would call for a ban on all embryonic cloning, whether for human cloning or therapeutic cloning purposes. Belgium’s proposed treaty would ban human cloning but allow each UN member state to individually decide related issues, such as whether to allow therapeutic cloning. Instead of voting on these proposals, however, they have both been thrown out and the member states will meet again in February to see whether a compromise can be reached on the issue.
The states that support the Costa Rica proposal (about 60 of them) say that even though they had enough votes to pass it, there was no way a vote would come about because Belgium had maneuvered to delay the voting for a year and they didn’t want to wait that long to vote on the issue. They are also happy because at least the UN didn't take a position contrary to their own.
If I were a betting woman, I would put my money on their continuing to debate the issue around this time next year. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground in the issue, unless they start to get into really refined nuances such as “any therapeutic cloning can only be performed until the embryo is 8 days old,” or something like that (which is the law in certain countries which allow limited therapeutic cloning).
Comments