ISRAEL: Ministers Prefer Temporary Cloning Ban

[Murray Charters <mcharters@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ISRAEL: Ministers Prefer Temporary Cloning Ban
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH  jsiegel@xxxxxxxxx
Jan. 12, 2004

Health Minister Dan Naveh and Science and Technology Minister Eliezer Sandberg 
oppose an open-ended ban on human
cloning and genetic changes in reproductive cells, and are instead asking for a 
five-year extension of the previous
five-year prohibition, which expired recently.

Last week, the Knesset Science and Technology Committee approved the second and 
third readings in the plenum of a bill
that would set a permanent prohibition on human cloning (using tissue from an 
individual to make asexual carbon copies
of them) and genetic changes in the sperm and ova. Naveh and Sandberg said that 
the committee decided in contravention
of the view of the government and scientific experts.

Sandberg said that scientific, technological and social changes might make the 
law obsolete. He added that if the law
is limited to another five years, the subject should be examined by the 
National Council on Bioethics, which should
make its recommendations before the law expires again in 2009.

He noted that after the first in-vitro fertilization babies were born, some 
said the technology was immoral, but today
? 25 years later ? the procedure is routine and tens of thousands of infants 
have been conceived and born without any
public fuss.

SOURCE: Jersusalem Post


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