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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 janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit primarily perky, parky pd: 55/41/37 cd: 55/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask] smail: 375 Country Street, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0 a new voice website: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn