IS A U.N. CLONING BAN DEAD? I hope so:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – U.N. diplomats, deadlocked for years over the drafting of treaty to ban the cloning of human beings worldwide, open negotiations on Monday on an alternative that would instead urge each government to adopt its own laws on human cloning. . . .

The U.N. project dates back to 2001, when France and Germany proposed a worldwide ban on human cloning by way of a binding global treaty.

That attempt failed after the George W. Bush administration fought to broaden the ban to all cloning of human embryos, a step many scientists and governments argued would block some promising avenues of medical research.

The U.S. campaign to persuade the 191-nation U.N. General Assembly to approve a broad anti-cloning treaty ran out of steam last November when the assembly’s treaty-writing legal committee, after years of debate, remained deeply divided on the issue.

This is one case where I’m glad the U.N. isn’t listening to the Bush Administration.