Fight Aging!

A pair of dueling press releases today from interested groups in the US:

From the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research:

An anticipated vote at the United Nations to enact a global ban on all forms of human cloning now seems to be leaning in favor of research. A vote was expected on a Costa-Rica/U.S. led treaty which sought to ban all cloning -- including therapeutic cloning, which produces stem cells and could cure diseases affecting over 100 million Americans. But in recent discussions on the cloning issue by the U.N. Legal Committee, more nations started voicing support for medical research. The Committee emerged without a vote.

...

Therapeutic cloning could be used to help nearly 100 million Americans suffering from cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, heart disease, ALS, and other devastating conditions for which treatments must still be found. Therapeutic cloning is fundamentally different from human reproductive cloning; therapeutic produces stem cells, not babies. In therapeutic cloning, the nucleus of a donor's unfertilized egg is removed and replaced with the nucleus of a patient's own cells, like a skin, heart, or nerve cell. No sperm is used in this procedure. The cells are not transplanted into a womb. The unfertilized egg cells are stored in a petri dish to become a source of stem cells that can be used to treat currently incurable medical conditions. Therapeutic cloning aims to treat or cure patients by creating tailor-made, genetically identical cells that their bodies won't reject. In other words, the research could allow patients to be cured using their own DNA.

From the Family Research Council:

U.N. Cloning Debate Leans Toward Global Ban

This week, Dr. David Prentice, Senior Fellow for Life Science at Family Research Council met with a variety of yet undecided countries to gain support of a global ban on human cloning. Slovakia, Nigeria, Kenya, Norway, Ethiopia, Philippines and Uganda are the latest to join the alliance of countries speaking out on behalf of the global ban.

Secretary General Kofi Annan has come out in favor of therapeutic cloning, for what it's worth:

"Obviously it's an issue for the member states to decide," Mr Annan said.

"But as an individual and in my personal view, I think I will go for therapeutic cloning."

That announcement will have brought cheer to US opponents like Belgium, which is behind a rival resolution co-sponsored by more than 20 nations that would ban only reproductive cloning.

Meanwhile, Virginia Postrel thinks that this exercise is not so important in the grand scale of things:

The United Nations may soon give friends of freedom yet another reason to support unilateralism (and cheer the U.N.'s general toothlessness). Having failed in the U.S. Senate, efforts to criminalize therapeutic cloning have gone international. Sponsored by Costa Rica and supported by the Bush administration, a measure to create an international convention to ban all forms of human cell cloning, including cloning for research purposes, has returned to the U.N.

While deeply concerned about potential U.S. laws, I don't share this site's fear of international conventions without enforcement power. Their roundup (via Instapundit is, however, a useful reminder that this issue never goes away.

Meanwhile, thanks to Senate rules and constitutional checks and balances, cell-cloning remains legal in the United States.

Well, legal in some parts of the US. I'd be inclined to agree with these sentiments if anti-research factions didn't have such a strong position in the US and elsewhere at the moment. Even a toothless resolution in the UN helps to strengthen the hand of those who are trying to hold back medical research.

To round off, the folks at BioMed Central don't see a vote as being likely today:

Members of the legal committee of the United Nation's General Assembly began once again tackling the debate over human cloning yesterday (October 21), but the chances of a decisive vote on the issue during this latest round of talks, scheduled to continue today, appear remote. And some members voiced their frustrations at the international body's inability to take a stand on human reproductive cloning, which all members appear to oppose.

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If the committee decides to vote on cloning, it may take years before they adopt the final text of the decision, Pecsteen explained, and each state can choose whether or not they want to ratify the agreement. The United Kingdom, for example, has said it will not participate in a convention that bans all forms of cloning.

As I noted previously, now is a good time to contact your elected representatives and let them know your opinions on the anti-research policies that your ambassadors to the UN are promoting.