European Commission clarifies reasons for human cloning opposition
Statements both directly from European Research Commissioner, Philippe Busquin and from the European Commission have set out the reasons for the European Commission's opposition to plans to clone humans. The moves come as a reaction to the news that Italian professor Severino Antinori and his team are planning to clone the first human being by November. Commissioner Busquin said there were two reasons why he was opposed in principle to human cloning. ' Firstly it is an issue which strongly touches on the substance of life itself and which presents serious ethically problems. Secondly, human cloning has no scientific value and in fact risks harming science's reputation.' Both Commissioner Busquin and the Commission statement emphasised that there has been and will be no Commission financing for this type of research. The Commission's statement went on to reiterate that the European Union's charter of fundamental rights, as well as a Council of Europe convention, ban human cloning. A Commission spokesman added that, as stated previously by the Commission, Article 6 of the Treaty means that this domain is dealt with legally by the individual Member States, so there is little that the Commission can do legally on its own to prevent professor Antinori's cloning plans. In addition, legislation in the various Member States, with the exception of the UK, is either ambiguous or non-existent. 'This could be an area where the proposed European research area [ERA] could network all the ethical bodies in the Member States to look at the issue, which could help produce a common position.' The spokesman added that for this reason, the Commission was fully supportive of the move by the German and French governments to bring the issue to the attention of the next United Nations assembly in September in the hope of instituting an international ban.