Strasbourg - The Council of Europe yesterday adopted a protocol banning human cloning which it said was the first and only legally-binding international text on the subject. The document, which must now be ratified by member-states of the 40nation organisation, prohibits "any intervention seeking to create a human being genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead".
The council said the ban, which followed the recent cloning of a sheep by British scientists, was intended "to protect the identity of human beings, preserve the random character of naturally-occurring genetic recombination which ensures their freedom and uniqueness and prevent their instrumentalisation through artificial cloning".