The Government has said it is committed to an outright international ban on cloning, despite a new campaign by an international group of eminent scientists to limit the ban to reproductive cloning.
The scientists, who are meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York tomorrow to lobby delegates, favour a ban on reproductive cloning, as opposed to an outright ban on all cloning techniques. Some of these they believe could be the key to new treatments for some chronic and fatal diseases.
Last November Ireland co-sponsored a resolution with Costa Rica at the UN calling for an outright ban on all forms of cloning, which was narrowly defeated. A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said the Irish position had not changed since then.
The scientists are expected to lobby UN delegates during the conference against the Costa Rica/Irish proposal in favour of a much more limited resolution. Neither resolution would be mandatory, however.
The scientists believe the ban proposed by Ireland would outlaw various therapeutic cloning techniques used in stem cell and master cell research. Such a ban, they believe, could prevent the development of a range of new treatments for illnesses, including heart disease, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes.
Speakers at tomorrow's conference in New York include Prof Ian Wilmut of the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, the first scientist to clone a human cell; and Korean scientist Dr Woo Suk Hwang, who first cloned a human embryo.