Vatican renews push for U.N. convention that would ban all cloning

Published: 2004-10-26

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- The Vatican has renewed its effort to get the United Nations to develop an international convention that would ban all forms of human cloning. Speaking Oct. 21 to a committee of the U.N. General Assembly assigned to consider the issue, the Vatican's U.N. nuncio said both reproductive and therapeutic cloning "involve disrespect for the dignity of the human being." Therapeutic cloning, carried out for research purposes in the hope of finding cures for many diseases, means "creating human embryos with the intention of destroying them," and this process, even if done with good intentions, has the result of "making one human life nothing more than the instrument of another," said Archbishop Celestino Migliore. A resolution sponsored by Costa Rica and supported by the United States and many other countries asks the General Assembly to appoint a committee to prepare a draft text of a convention against all human cloning. But another resolution, sponsored by Belgium and supported by a number of European and other countries, calls for development of a convention that would prohibit only reproductive cloning. Reproductive cloning is often defined as "the replication of a human individual by cultivating a cell with genetic material through the egg, embryo, fetal and newborn stages into a new human individual."

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