Italy extends 1997 cloning ban as debate rages

FLORENCE, Italy (Reuters Health) - Italy's Health Minister Girolamo Sirchia
said on Friday that a ban on cloning enacted in 1997 would be extended
until the end of the year while the country's parliament continues a long
and heated debate on a new assisted reproduction law.

The ban, which forbids any form of experimentation and intervention "even
indirectly" in the field of human cloning will be valid for another 6
months, until December 31, according to an official statement.

Sirchia also extended other articles, which prohibit "the commercialisation
and publicising of gametes and human embryos and any genetic material."

The validity of a 2001 ordinance, which bans imports of embryos or gametes,
has also been stretched to the same deadline.

The measure has been made "while waiting for the law on assisted
reproduction," the statement says.

The debate on the controversial law is due to continue on Tuesday, and is
expected to see parliamentary forces fiercely divided.

Only 5 of the 17 articles of the draft law have been approved, presaging a
regulation that recognises the rights of the conceived, bans donor
insemination, denies access to artificial procreation techniques to single
women and puts assisted reproduction on a "black list" of treatments that
patients must pay for on their own.

One article of the law that triggered a sharp disagreement from the Vatican
as well as strong reaction from the gay movement allows "adult couples of
different sexes of potentially fertile age," unmarried or married, to
access artificial procreation procedures.

This law would allow a couple consisting of a man and woman - married or
unmarried - to use assisted reproduction techniques. However, it would not
allow single women or lesbian couples to use donor sperm and assisted
reproduction to achieve a pregnancy.

"By denying single women the access to assisted reproduction, the
parliament implies that homosexuality represents an impediment, a
discriminant, an unsuitability mark to be a parent," Titti De Simone, of
the Refounded Communist Party and president of the National Lesbian
Association told the parliament.

The most controversial debate next week is likely to evolve around Article
13, which enumerates a long list of bioethical bans in order to avoid any
experimentation on embryos, including a prohibition of any testing of
embryos for research and experimental purposes, freezing embryos and embryo
suppression.

The article also specifies that "the production of embryos is allowed only
within the limits strictly necessary to implant one and no more than
three." In other words, all embryos will have to be implanted in the
uterus. In case of multiple pregnancies, selective abortion is forbidden,
according to the draft.

Called "medieval" by parliamentary women from both the center-left and the
center-right parties, the draft law has also caused concern among several
scientists such as Nobel laureate Rita Levi Montalcini and oncologist and
former health minister Umberto Veronesi, who wrote an open letter in favor
of embryo research.

Italy has been waiting for a law regulating assisted fertility for 36 years
- similar attempts to set limits on doctors trying to help infertile
couples have vanished in past legislatures. After more than 500 amendments
are examined and all of the 17 articles of the draft law are approved, the
bill will go through the Senate, where it stalled in the previous legislature.

Last Updated: 2002-06-14 14:42:28 -0400 (Reuters Health)
By Rossella Lorenzi
Copyright 2002 Reuters Limited.
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2002/06/14/eline/links/20020614elin026.
html

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