The United Nations and human cloning: a debate on hold.

In Brief I n August 2001 France and Germany proposed that the United Nations develop an " international convention against the reproductive cloning of human beings. " The primary impetus behind the initiative was apparently a concern that those threatening to clone a human being would engage in venue shopping, looking for a nation that had not yet legally banned reproductive cloning. An international convention against such cloning, if approved by the United Nations, would announce an international moral consensus against reproductive cloning, and would ban it in nations that ratified the convention. At the November 2001 session of the U.N.'s Legal Committee, the Vatican observer was the sole voice arguing that the convention should be expanded to ban research cloning (sometimes called " therapeutic cloning "). In February 2002, the United States announced that it would also seek to link the questions of reproductive cloning and research cloning. France and Germany replied that the issue on which an international consensus undoubtedly exists should be treated first, with a discussion of research cloning to follow. After preliminary sparring in 2002 and early 2003, the issue of human cloning came to a head last fall, during the 58th Session of the U.N. General Assembly. In late September, the Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings took up the U.S. position, contained in a joint U.S.-Costa Rican proposal, and the French-German position, embodied in a proposal submitted by Belgium. The committee was unable to agree on recommending either draft. Similarly, in late October, the full Legal Committee failed to achieve any agreement. At a cli-mactic November 6 meeting, however, a coalition of nations led by Iran and supported by most members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) proposed a two-year deferral of further debate, which prevailed by a vote of 80 to 79, with 15 abstentions. United Kingdom—all of the countries with the most liberal policies on stem cell research, as well as multiple nations that preferred to focus the convention solely on reproductive cloning. Industrialized nations voting against the de-against deferral. Canada abstained. Undeterred by what was widely perceived as a stunning defeat, the Costa Rican delegation sought to have the Legal Committee's decision reconsidered when the cloning question came before the General Assembly. Costa Rica's December 5th resolution also asserted , in language borrowed from the earlier U.S.-Costa Rican resolution, that …