Ambitious young scientists who want to make a splash with the company, although the unfounded expectations that, even if initially rejected, they will eventually be celebrated as modern Galileos, have not disappeared either. Witness He Jiankui, despite his three-year prison sentence announced in late 2019, may have had a deterrent effect on some of them, or at least prompted them to pay more attention to where and how they work. Although President Bill Clinton called for swift congressional action following Dolly`s announcement[13] (and a subsequent statement by a Harvard-trained physicist that he wanted to open a clone-based fertility clinic), it wasn`t until July 2001 that one of the two houses of Congress approved any form of ban on human cloning. Rep. Dave Weldon (R.-Fla.) supported a bill that would have completely banned the creation of cloned embryos. [15] It passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 265 to 162, with 63 Democrats voting “yes” and 19 Republicans voting “no.” [16] However, the equivalent of Weldon`s bill, drafted by Senator Sam Brownback (R.-Kans.), never made it to the Senate. [17] The House of Representatives passed Weldon`s bill again in 2003, but the Senate has yet to do anything. [18] Weldon and Brownback`s attempts to pass the law in 2005[19] and 2007[20] made even less progress. All of this brings me to this day. Where are the clones that would be Richard Seed 2.0 or Clonaid 2.0? Cloning could also be prohibited under the enumerated authority of Congress to regulate foreign trade.

Although this power has been the subject of less legal analysis than the interstate trading power, “there is little reason to believe that the meaning of the term `commerce` should change from clause to clause.” [77] While cloning for the production of children cannot be said to be an activity that significantly affects trade with foreign countries, cloning for biomedical research, and indeed many other forms of research on human embryos, would certainly have the following effects: embryonic stem cell lines derived from cloned embryos could be sold or shipped across the country and around the world (such as stem cell lines from non-embryos can be used). cloned sources). where they could be used for various medical and commercial purposes. Ruggie (2014:10) argues that conceptual arguments must be supported by experiential arguments if they are to convince people of the need for change. The debate on cloning was necessarily conceptual, because if security issues prevailed, there was no way to experiment with cloning to see whether fears (for example, about autonomy and individuality) were justified or unfounded. The next indicators are animal cloning and twin studies. However, it would be possible to exchange national rules and strategies on cloning through workshops and round tables, as well as scenario-based exercises involving potential stakeholders. Similar exercises (compilation of examples of legal frameworks, best practices and case studies) were proposed by the IGBC in its response to the draft 2015 IBC report on the human genome and human rights. Such activities could address the needs of developing countries for national cloning legislation identified by the three IPC Working Groups (2008-2009, 2010-2011 and 2014-2015) by means other than a binding international agreement, notwithstanding the recent recommendations of the IBC on the subject (and approval by the IGBC). The further development of the deliberative format of the bioethics programme, away from brief and formal discussions in committees towards an in-depth exchange of information between a wider range of stakeholders, bottom-up commitments for action and the development of best practices through feasibility studies, may not lead to a decision to start contract negotiation (or even a more flexible statement), but could lead to a range of resources and commitments that could prove equally effective in promoting ethical ethics.

Conduct of States and other actors. An additional benefit would be that this type of less legalistic and more flexible deliberative outcomes could be more easily adapted and developed to take into account future scientific advances (Pauwelyn et al., 2014: 742-743). Even if UNESCO decides to follow the 2015 IBC recommendation to further develop another international legal instrument on human cloning, the adoption of these measures could lead to a better instrument than, for example, the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, as there would be less interest-based negotiations and more stakeholder consent. (Interestingly, a recent ruling suggests that some cloned animals may also not be patentable. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in 2014 that “Dolly`s genetic identity for her donor parents does not make her patentable” because the cloned sheep is not “significantly” different from sheep found in the wild. [88] However, Dolly`s cloning process was legally patented. [89] In general, the legality of biological patents is governed by an evolving policy issued by the USPTO in response to several court decisions – a complex issue that is beyond the scope of this report.) At the heart of many arguments about human dignity, often implicitly, is the idea that copying a person`s genome is a morally problematic act. From the perspective of human dignity, the concern is based on the assumption that a clone`s autonomy is compromised and that a person`s genome is particularly important for human uniqueness. [18] For those who hold this view, dignity is obviously closely related to autonomy (probably a version of the classical Kantian view of dignity) and the ability to make autonomous decisions. Moreover, dignity is associated with human “oneness”, although it is rarely explained.

As Donald Bruce argues, “the deliberate copying of human genetic identity seems to go beyond something inherent in human dignity and individuality.” [19] Many policy statements, such as the few mentioned above, seem to support this view, specifically linking genetic identity to the concept of human dignity. Other claims simply claim that “the production of identical human individuals” [20] or the creation of a “genetic copy” [21] should be prohibited. Cloning policies at the state level vary widely, ranging from generous funding for cloning for biomedical research to criminal prohibitions and a complete absence of official policies. As detailed in the appendix to this report, seven states (Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Virginia) prohibit all forms of human cloning, while ten states (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey and Rhode Island) have so-called “clone and kill” laws. More than half of the fifty states currently have no cloning laws. Members of the IBC expressed unequivocal concern that recent scientific developments had raised the need for a binding international legal instrument. However, comments from IGBC Member States indicated that the political obstacles that have prevented the implementation of such an instrument in the past still exist. [sic] (UNESCO, 2016b) At its meeting in July 2015 (ninth session), the IGBC considered this draft report to be “relevant and timely” (UNESCO, 2015a: 2).

This was in stark contrast to statements made by some of its members a few years earlier that a ban on human reproductive cloning would be “premature” (UNESCO, 2009a: 7).