| Program on Science Technology
and Society
Regulatory Issues |
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| Program on Science Technology
and Society
Regulatory Issues |
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| CLONING LEGISLATION
Senators Feinstein and Kennedy Introduce Legislation to Ban Human Cloning |
EUROPEANS BAN CLONING |
| GERMLINE ENGINEERING LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS | In the past decade, there have been many efforts to regulate or block cloning, germline engineering, and research on human embryos -- often at the same time. These three technologies have apparently become linked in many people's minds, and are a focus for attempts to halt what they see as a too-rapid advance in our potential to manipulate our own biology. |
| Germline Engineering: Policy and Ethics - excerpts from recent journal articles | There is great variation in how these technologies are handled around the world. In some countries they are criminal offenses, in others they remain unregulated. It seems unlikely that a global consensus will soon develop about how to deal with them, but there have been serious attempts to enact global bans. UNESCO, for example, recently ignored various panel recommendations and amended its proposed declaration on the human genome to explicitly condemn human cloning and germline engineering. The draft of its article 8 now states that "practices which are contrary to human dignity, such as reproductive cloning of human beings, shall not be permitted," and article 21 now asks UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee to identify "practices that could be contrary to human dignity such as germline interventions." The document has not yet been voted on by the full UNESCO membership. |
The following pages present as many declarations and legislative proposals on the regulation of these issues as we could find. These pages will be updated periodically. If you know of any relevant information not listed here, please send it to us so we can include it.
