Triumph in New York
The United Nations Condemns Human Cloning

By Nigel M. de S. Cameron

March 8, 2005, will go down in history. It is the date on which the plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly ratified solemnly the anti-cloning Declaration recommended by its legal committee, with an even stronger vote of nearly 3-1 called on member states to ban all human cloning. The voting was 84-34, though six further nations asked to be added to the yes vote taking it to 90. Despite the fact that the American press has largely ignored the news (it got only a fleeting one-paragraph reference in the New York Times, for example), and the attempts of well-placed pro-cloning commentators to dismiss its significance, it may prove to be one of the most important events of our lifetime.

Eight years after the cloning of Dolly the sheep, and just weeks after the British government, the only major pro-cloning nation in the west, granted Dolly’s cloner Ian Wilmut a licence to clone human embryos for research, the nations of the globe have solemnly spoken against the "Brave New World." Heeding President Bush’s direct appeal in his recent speech to the General Assembly, and ignoring the biotech industry’s hype, they have taken an historic step for sanity and the human future.

What does this mean? Critics of the declaration were quick to argue that it was merely a declaration, and not a convention. A convention is a treaty, binding those parties who sign it to introduce laws to implement what it says. But in the UN system not everyone is obliged to sign. Had the Cloning Declaration been a convention, the People’s Republic of China and the United Kingdom would have refused to sign anyway.

As it happens, you could argue that a declaration has greater moral force, since nations do not need to sign onto it. It stands as a statement of the UN’s view of things and speaks for the international community. Perhaps the most important single document of the 20th century--the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights–was also not a convention.

There is no question: the cloning states of the world are now in the dock. The best efforts of the biotech industry, including a sign-on by many of the world’s national scientific organizations, was unable to budge the consensus, forged by a diverse coalition, that called the pro-cloning policies of perhaps six or seven nations incompatible with human dignity.

Politics is about momentum, and the momentum on cloning has begun to go our way. Much depends on what we do with this news, since the major media outlets have mostly censored it. It is not just this week’s story, or this month’s. The fact of the new UN Declaration is one we need to trumpet for years to come.

I shall be taking part in a major public debate in London on these issues in May: and my first point will be to tell the British public that the UN has turned its back on the deeply unethical practice people like Professor Wilmut. We need each of us – in local newspapers, radio phone-ins, meetings in our churches and schools – to get out the word: the international community agrees with us on cloning.

Russia agrees, Australia agrees, Germany agrees. Even states that voted against the motion, such as France and Canada, have enacted domestic bans on cloning. Feminists and environmentalists have joined pro-life Christians in working to have it banned. The hubris of leaders of the U.S.-led biotech industry needs to come back to haunt them. The world is turning its back on the abuses they are seeking to exploit for financial gain.

I have often suggested that the "biotech century" started a little early, with the news in 1997 that Dolly had been cloned. We have waited too long for the good news from New York: the world says no. Now it’s up to us. Get the word out, and work for a cloning ban here in the United States.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron is Director, Council for Biotechnology Policy, and a Fellow, The Wilberforce Forum.