Australia’s most prominent stem cell scientist,Alan Trounson, has joined other scientific luminaries in an attempt to sway a vote on human cloning in the United Nations later this year. Although reproduction cloning has been condemned by nearly everyone, a debate last year showed that the UN is split between countries championing therapeutic cloning and countries which want all forms of cloning banned. A Florida lawyer, Bernard Siegel, has marshalled a number of scientists, research institutes, biotechnology groups, venture capitalists and lawyers to form the Genetics Policy Institute.

Siegel and his associates contend that “therapeutic [cloning] research, which is not reproductive cloning, will lead to breakthrough cures such as creating replacement tissue that the human body won’t reject”. Before leaving for a conference for UN delegates, Trounson spoke to ABC radio and complained that the cloning projects of the lunatic Raelian sect were being confused with legitimate scientific research.

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