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OTTAWA: Senate Bans Cloning And Other Reproductive Technology Canadian Press - Wednesday, March 03, 2004 OTTAWA -- A Senate committee has unanimously passed legislation banning human cloning, rent-a-womb contracts and the sale of human sperm and eggs. Approval by the upper house committee virtually guarantees the legislation, which has been in the works for a full decade, will become law. The bill was approved without amendments. The bill would fill a regulatory void in Canada, setting rules for embryonic stem cell research and creating a national agency to oversee the activities of fertility clinics. "Hurrah!'' said Diane Allen of the Toronto-based Infertility Network. "This is going to bring in safeguards for fertility patients, for their children, for society as a whole.'' The legislation will set Canada on a fundamentally different course than the United States, where it is legal to pay surrogate mothers to bear children. Some fertility clinics have warned that the ban on paying for sperm or eggs could produce a shortage of those materials and curb the options for infertile couples. But others - including some of the country's leading ethicists - said the building blocks of human life should not be treated as commercial products. The legislation will provide a clear framework for medical scientists anxious to pursue the promise of stem cells in developing new treatments. They will be allowed to work with surplus embryos created in the course of infertility treatments, but not to clone embryos for research purposes. The bill does not ensure that children born through donor insemination can learn the identity of their biological parents, but it will give them access to medical information about their parents. The law is to be reviewed in three years, and may be changed at that time. SOURCE: The National Post, Canada http://tinyurl.com/24rhg * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn