A group of scientists, doctors and legal experts asked the UN on Wednesday to seek an advisory opinion from the World Court declaring human cloning to be a "crime against humanity."
"The World Court is the ultimate authority on international law, and an opinion from the court would bring a very strong legal and moral force to bear against the would-be cloners," said attorney Bernard Siegel of Coral Gables, Florida, who has organized the initiative.
Siegel sued Clonaid, a firm linked to the Raelian movement that believes extraterrestrials created humankind, after it claimed in December to have cloned the first human baby.
Scientists have since poured doubt on that claim, although Clonaid now says it has cloned five humans.
Siegel said his group had written UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to ask that the 191-nation General Assembly request the advisory opinion from the World Court, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands and is formally known as the International Court of Justice.
The initiative comes as a UN campaign for a global treaty against human cloning appears headed for collapse. The UN working group appointed to lay the groundwork for the treaty deadlocked last week over whether to push for a total human cloning ban backed by the US or a partial ban exempting scientific research on stem cells.
A group of some 40 nations, led by Costa Rica and the US and assembled with the help of US-based anti-abortion groups, insisted on a treaty banning both the cloning of humans and "therapeutic" or "experimental" cloning, in which human embryos are cloned for medical research.
A rival group of 14 governments, most European but also including Japan, Brazil and South Africa, argued that the top priority should be to quickly ban the cloning of humans, leaving it up to individual governments to decide whether -- and if so, how -- to regulate therapeutic cloning.
"It is urgent that the public understand and differentiate between the cloning charlatans and those scientists doing critical research that might lead to cures of deadly diseases," said Lawrence Goldstein, a member of the group's science advisory board.
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