When success is a half-full glass
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Despite the U.S. lobbying, therapeutic cloning, which is seen as a potential magic wand to cure many diseases has not been banned by the U.N.
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Therapeutic cloning hopes to find a cure to put paralysed people, like the late Christopher Reeve of `Superman' fame, back on their feet.
IN THE end, the arm-twisting tactics that the U.S. routinely uses to tame countries or to make smaller nations fall in line had little effect. And if 51 per cent of those who voted (in the U.S elections) felt President George Bush was right in not giving the scientists a free hand in killing embryos in the name of science, all the member nations (of the United Nations) did not share their views.
Thus, banning all forms of cloning — to produce clones, for therapeutic purpose or for research — an agenda that the U.S wanted to impose on all nations immaterial of their stance, did not see the light of the day last week in the United Nations.
Major blow to Bush
In what can be termed as the first major blow to the re-elected President George Bush, the resolution to ban all forms of cloning offered by Costa Rica and fully supported by the U.S. and other 60 other nations failed to bulldoze Belgium's resolution backed only by 20-odd countries.
But make no mistake here. The 20-odd nations that supported the Belgium's resolution were nations like Britain, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, to name a few, where serious scientific work is done. The Costa Rica resolution was backed by religion states like the Vatican and many small developing nations.
With the two sides too divided to muster sufficient support for a treaty that would achieve worldwide ratification, Italy's draft declaration came in as a face saving measure.
Accordingly, the two sides have agreed to settle for a nonbinding declaration that `prohibits any attempt to create human life through cloning and any research that intends to achieve that aim.' In essence, this allows nations to continue working on therapeutic cloning which researchers say can lead to cures for diseases like Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's.
But there is a lesson to be learnt from this. As the New York Times editorial had pointed out, "there is no need for the United Nations to meddle in an ideologically driven issue on which consensus is impossible."
Down but not out
The unequivocal verdict notwithstanding, the U.S. insists that it has won another battle in its war on human cloning. "We are actually pleased with the progress that we have made in preventing any action by the U.N. that would endorse human cloning in any form," said Adam Ereli, US State Department spokesman. "It's our longstanding position that all human cloning is wrong. ... So the fact that there isn't any action by the U.N. to endorse cloning is a moderate success."
Incidentally, all countries accept that reproductive cloning — the cloning of babies — should be banned. Belgium and twenty other nations were only against extending this ban to therapeutic cloning.
But for Bush who appeared to settle for nothing less than a total ban when he spoke before the U.N. General Assembly in August, this setback cannot be wished away.
"All governments to affirm a basic ethical principle: No human life should ever be produced or destroyed for the benefit of another," Bush had urged before the General Assembly. This setback comes after the U.N. had debated the issue for the last two years.
The Italian document has not been accepted in totality though. For instance, Belgium has already raised objections to the term `human life' in the document.
While all scientists accept that embryos are indeed human life, what remains a contentious issue is accepting embryos as `human beings.' Pro-life groups label embryos as human beings. Hence, according to them, killing the embryos to harvest stem cells is tantamount to killing humans. Scientists refuse to buy this argument. They argue that an embryo used in cloning is a human life but not necessarily a human being.
No succour from U.N
The major upset in the U.N. is not all. Back home, President Bush who has thus far been unable to force a ban on all forms of cloning through a divided Congress banked very much on a favourable U.N. verdict to give him the strength to muscle through the opposition. Even opinion polls in the US have shown that stem cell research enjoyed strong support of the public. Now, Bush has to look elsewhere for help.
This setback comes at a time when an unprecedented initiative in California saw the Proposition 71 voted through. Under this scheme, Californians will raise $3 billion (Rs.13,800-crores) in public money for stem cell research. This is noteworthy because Bush had limited federal funding of stem cell research in 2001 to $25 million (Rs11.50-crores) a year on certain pre-approved stem cell lines.
Double standards
Even before Bush finds a way to get his ideals approved by the Congress, what is urgently needed of him is to put in place necessary regulations to deal with spare embryos found in infertility clinics across the U.S.
In a paper published in the journal Politics and the Life Sciences, the authors found a disturbing lack of consistency in the way in which waste embryos were treated in the United States. Of the 217 clinics that responded to the author's questionnaire, the disposal of extra embryos differed in 175 clinics.
While some handed the tiny ball of cells over to the couple or individual to take home, some others incinerated them as biological waste. Of the clinics that incinerated the embryos, four required the presence of the couple while twenty-five clinics forbade it.
Seven clinics even said a prayer during disposal in a quasi-funeral. A few clinics froze spare embryos indefinitely, while only three per cent of the clinics managed to avoid creating superfluous embryos.
Harvesting stem cells leaves the embryos dead. According to the U.S. administration, this is akin to killing `human beings.' From this notion stems the urge to ban all forms of cloning.
Now, are `human beings' not killed when these spare embryos are incinerated or disposed in a quasi-funeral? Probably the U.S. administration believes in the dictum: `different rules for different folks!'
R. Prasad
in Chennai
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