WHO Calls For Ban On Human Cloning

The director-general of the World Health Organization, HiroshiNakajima, has issued a statement in which he stresses that he "considers the use of cloning for the replication of human individuals to be ethically unacceptable as it would violate some of the basic principles which govern medically-assisted procreation."

Dr Nakajima referred back to a meeting in 1992 which concluded that everyone has the right to reap the benefits of scientific progress, but that there was "a need to prohibit extreme forms of experimentation, such as human cloning, interspecies fertilization, the creation of chimeras and the alteration of the germ-cell genome." Dr Nakajima says that he would like that these guidelines to serve as a starting point for the international debate which is required to establish safeguards. The first meeting is to take place in Bangkok in April.

European Members of Parliament have also joined in the furore, and have asked the European Commission that human cloning experiments be globally prohibited. They would also like to see strict controls put into force with regard to animal cloning, following the announcement that scientists at PPL Therapeutics in Scotland had cloned a sheep called Dolly (Marketletter March 3). However, some officials are concerned that the huge outcry generated in recent weeks will prevent important scientific developments from being made.