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Singapore Bans Human Cloning, Stem Cell Research OK Thu 2 September, 2004 12:06 By Jacqueline Wong SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore banned human cloning Thursday and said offenders would face 10 years in jail to prevent "abhorrent experiments." Singapore is a science hub with some of the world's most liberal rules on stem cell research and aims to boast 15 world-class biotechnology companies by 2010 after pouring at least $1.8 billion into life sciences. "There is almost unanimous agreement from the international community, local scientific and religious groups as well as our general public that reproductive cloning of human beings is abhorrent," junior health minister Balaji Sadasivan told parliament while passing the law. The government raised the jail term for human cloning from a proposed 5 years after public pressure. The law, part of a series of regulations to govern a nascent biomedical research industry, specifically bans placing any human embryo clone in the body of a human or the body of an animal. It also prohibits developing a human embryo outside the body of a woman for more than 14 days. Any person found guilty of cloning activity could also be fined up to S$100,000 ($58,000). But in keeping with Singapore's relatively liberal attitude toward human stem cell research, the legislation allows therapeutic cloning, or the creation of cloned embryos for the purpose of harvesting stem cells. Singapore joins about 30 countries with laws or decrees that "explicitly or inexplicitly prohibit cloning of human beings," said Sadasivan. Of those, about half bar therapeutic cloning, he added, likening Singapore's position to that of Britain. COURTING SCIENTISTS Some members of parliament appealed for safeguards against therapeutic cloning. "We should balance between an overly conservative approach that stifles scientific progress and an overly permissive one," said one member, Ong Seh Hong. Singapore accelerated its courtship of the world's scientific community last year with the opening of Biopolis, a S$500 million ($290 million) high-tech neighborhood of research building designed as a base for scientists and their families. To draw scientists and biotech funds into its 40,000-sq-meter (430,600-sq-ft) Biopolis park, Singapore is offering a mix of tax breaks, grants and other incentives worth $1.3 billion -- and one of the world's most relaxed legal climates for research. Facing fewer restrictions than in the United States or parts of Europe, scientists can clone human embryos and keep them alive for 14 days in Singapore to produce stem cells -- master cells that can grow into almost any tissue in the body. This is fast turning Singapore into the world's capital for work on stem cells, which can be harvested from aborted embryos, embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization or embryos cloned for the purpose. Alan Colman, who famously cloned "Dolly" the sheep, moved to Singapore in 2002 when his European funding slowed. Some scientists say stem cell research could yield a cure for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, but the Catholic Church believes destroying embryos is murder -- a position backed by President Bush. Bush's Democratic challenger, John Kerry, has vowed to lift restrictions on stem cell research. The U.N. General Assembly is divided over whether to allow therapeutic cloning to continue or to adopt a broad cloning ban championed by the Bush administration and Costa Rica with strong backing from the U.S. anti-abortion movement and many predominantly Roman Catholic nations. SOURCE: Reuters, UK http://tinyurl.com/6jdcz * * * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn