PLANS by a team of US and Italian doctors to clone human babies could just as easily be legally carried out in Australia, a Catholic bioethicist warned last week.
Queensland Bioethics Centre director Ray Campbell condemned the US-Italian team’s human cloning plans which were announced at a press conference in Rome on March 9.
He said human reproduction using cloning technology was contrary to human dignity and not permitted in accordance with the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights.
“This United Nations declaration, made in 1997, is in agreement with the position of the Catholic Church and many others,” he said.
“It is now clear that there are people who are prepared to go down this path if allowed, whatever others say about the respect for dignity of the human person and the risks involved.”
Mr Campbell said the United Nations had called for legislation to ban human cloning.
“Last year the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Queensland Bioethics Centre made submissions to the Federal Inquiry into Scientific, Ethical and Regulatory Considerations Relevant to Cloning of Human Beings,” he said.
“Both the bishops’ conference and the Queensland Bioethics Centre, along with others, called for the introduction of legislation to ban cloning in Australia. We need clear legislation in Australia by banning human cloning.”
Catholic News Service reported that the cloning plans also drew negative reaction from the Vatican.
Vatican experts, however, virtually ignored the team’s March 9 announcement.
Some scientists said the project would inevitably produce premature deaths and physical aberrations, while others called it a publicity stunt with little chance of succeeding.
The cloning team is led by Panayiotis Zavos, a US fertility researcher, and includes Severino Antinori, an Italian fertility doctor who has drawn past criticism for helping women in their 60s to conceive.
The team vowed to press ahead with its project to clone a human baby, saying it would be done in a Mediterranean country, but without specifying which one.
