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Weeding out seeds of human cloning
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PARIS, Jan 13: In the first international treaty to confront the growing fears of human cloning, 19 European nations agreed on Monday to ``prohibit efforts to create human beings genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead''.Britain and Germany, though, kept their distance from the protocol, a measure that London considers too strict and Bonn too mild. Incidentally, Dolly the sheep, the first clone, was produced by Scottish scientists.Britain has a strong tradition of defending the freedom of scientific research. On the other hand, Germany claimed the measure did not go far enough, and said it was weaker than the current German law forbidding all research on human embryos, a legacy of Nazi attempts to conduct genetic engineering of humans. Although Monday's events were planned months ago, they clearly took on a greater significance with the announcement last week by a Chicago doctor, Richard Seed, that he will try to clone humans. ``This is a horror story that is presented
here...we will use every effort to prevent it,'' said Jean Boucauris, Greece's director for European affairs. Under the treaty, signatory nations agreed to enact laws that outlaw human cloning. Officials called it `binding', but the protocol itself makes no mention of sanctions against those that do not carry it out. The signing of the agreement came on the day French President Jacques Chirac called for an international ban on human cloning, and two days after US President Bill Clinton urged the Congress to do the same. The July 1997 presentation of Dolly set off an international outcry over the implications for human cloning. Many US and international leaders renewed their condemnation after Seed said on January 7 that he planned to begin working on human clones, using a newly-developed technique. The United States, Japan, Canada and the Vatican participated in drafting the protocol, which must be ratified by signatory nations before taking effect.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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