Ban on human cloning
EUROPEAN leaders after a recently held two-day summit at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg have pledged to ban human cloning as part of measures to prevent the abuse of technology. The Council promised to outlaw "any intervention to create a human being identical to another human being, whether living or dead".
The ban, similar to the one already in force in Britain, will be added to the European Convention on Biomedicine. The convention already regulates embryo research genetic testing and organ transplants.
The new measures follow recent advances in genetic engineering, including the cloning of a sheep by the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh. The commitment to ban human cloning has toped the agenda of the council of Europe since its foundation in 1949.
However, Patrick Dixon, a genetics expert and author of the book, The Genetics Revolution has said that the Council's move would not prevent the human cloning of one being born within two years.
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