US May Revive Bid for UN Ban on Stem Cell Research

[papau]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=3919567

US May Revive Bid for UN Ban on Stem Cell Research
Mon December 1, 2003 06:43 PM ET

(Page 1 of 2)
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - President Bush's administration is considering a drive to overturn a recent U.N. vote and revive work on a global treaty that would ban medical research on stem cells, diplomats said on Monday.

In a setback for the White House and a victory for the scientific community, the U.N. General Assembly's 191-nation legal committee voted only last month to sideline the treaty for two years.

But the proposal to defer the drafting process until 2005 was approved by a margin of just 80 to 79 with 15 abstentions, and the issue is scheduled to resurface in the full General Assembly next Monday. The assembly's membership is identical to that of its legal committee.

The treaty started out two years ago as a plan to prohibit the cloning of human beings. But the Bush administration -- with the backing of the U.S. anti-abortion movement and many predominantly Catholic countries -- wanted it expanded to outlaw both human cloning and cloning human cells for scientific research purposes.
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[La_Serpiente]

1. Good Lord

Conservatives HATE the UN. But now, they have found a useful reason for it: to wipe out any progressive medicine for the international community.

[Sparky McGruff]

2. Weasels.

It's not enough to ban US researchers from stem cell research, nor to starve them of funding (via "earmarks" of NIH money to repub pet projects). They lied about the ability of "stem cell lines" to be used for this research.

This work could really help people. Can't have that.

[kskiska]

3. It seems the rest of the civilized world

is putting things off for a couple years in desperate hopes this idiot will be gone and we can get on with it.

[madrchsod]

4. that`s ok

china or some euro country will develope cures to some of our worst dieases and we won`t be able to use it. fuck`n assholes

[tabasco]

5. Related Story: Spanish Inquisition to Reconvene

WHY do we have so many people in the world against progress? This effort by the reviled Bush administration will go nowhere, but the effort is despicable nonetheless. Cloning humans is wrong, but stem cell research is an entirely different arena.

[ninkasi]

6. This whole country

is becoming completely dysfunctional under Herr Chimp. When I think about all the insanity gaining traction with the far right-wing in charge of everything, it boggles my mind. From trying to do away with separation of church and state, to banning stem cell research, to the notorious Patriot Act, and all of the other looney tunes schemes they have, I can only conclude that the whole world is laughing at us.

It disturbs me deeply to think that we've come to this, and are rapidly destroying our credibility on a global scale. Creationism taught in schools, generals comparing whose god is bigger than another country's god, blatant corruption everywhere, if we can't get this idiot voted out in 2004, I think we've had it as a world power. The decline is assured, since we will no longer be able to conduct scientific research, and our public schools will be a joke.

[Paschall]

7. Don't we have other more important issues on the table at the UN?

Like Iraq, maybe?