CGS-authored

Delegates began talks this week on a convention banning human cloning, with general agreement that cloning to produce babies should be totally prohibited, but sharp divisions on whether cloning for scientific and medical research should be permitted.

The name of the committee handling the negotiations, the Ad Hoc Committee on an International Convention Against the Reproductive Cloning of Human Beings, indicates that a certain premise for the negotiations is already settled. According to Christian Much, the head of the German delegation to the talks, "the real fundamental issue" is whether the ban should be total or if allowances should be made for scientific research, such as stem cell research.

Proposals to ban human reproductive cloning were first submitted by Germany and France last August. Much said the negotiations should be based on "pragmatism."

"You should not hold one good idea hostage to a second good idea where there is no agreement," he told UN Wire. "We should do what we can do now and agree on the one thing on which we all agree, banning reproductive cloning."

"The starting point...

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