From: Keith Elis (hagbard@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Wed Apr 01 1998 - 20:45:48 MST
UPDATE!
Thanks to Darren Reynolds for calling my attention to this.
Also, anyone who might be interested, the Council of Europe's website is
at http://www.coe.fr/index.asp.
The chart of signatures/ratifications of the Biomedicine Convention can
be found at http://www.coe.fr/tablconv/164t.htm. And
signatures/ratifications for the human cloning ban can be found at
http://www.coe.fr/tablconv/168t.htm.
attached mail follows:
Transhuman Mailing List
Keith Elis wrote:
>I am curious to hear from our European friends concerning their
>reactions to this, now that it has had time to season. Have there been
>any rumblings in the European genetics community? Have any European
>governments (members of the Council of Europe) offered position
>statements on this? Why is there only one country which has signed the
>Biomedicine Convention so far? Why hasn't anyone signed the Cloning
>Protocol? Might these government-types be smarter than we give them
>credit for?
You might be interested to read this:
19 European nations sign ban on human cloning
Britain, Germany not among signatories
January 12, 1998
Web posted at: 8:00 p.m. EST (0100 GMT)
PARIS (CNN) -- Nineteen European nations on Monday signed an agreement to
prohibit the cloning of humans.
Representatives from 19 members of the Council of Europe signed a protocol
that would commit their countries to ban by law "any intervention seeking
to create human beings genetically identical to another human being,
whether living or dead." It rules out any exception to the ban, even in the
case of a completely sterile couple.
<snip>
The accord will become binding on the signatories as soon as it has been
ratified in five states.
Countries signing are: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland,
Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, Portugal, Romania, San Marino,
Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey.
Britain and Germany -- two of Europe's biggest nations -- did not sign the
protocol.
Germany claims the measure is weaker than a current German law that forbids
all research on human embryos -- a reaction to Nazi genetic engineering
experiments.
Britain, where scientists are at the forefront of cloning, has a strong
tradition of defending the freedoms of scientific research.
<snip>
The full article, with video and pictures, is at:
http://cnn.com/WORLD/9801/12/cloning.ban/
Regards,
Darren
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