Source: EURLEX
Language: en
Format: md

[**Avis juridique important**](../../../editorial/legal_notice.htm)

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# 91999E0363

**WRITTEN QUESTION No. 363/99 by Joaquín SISÓ CRUELLAS Cloning in Spain** 
  
*Official Journal C 341 , 29/11/1999 P. 0099*

  

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0363/99

by Joaquín Sisó Cruellas (PPE) to the Commission

(1 March 1999)

Subject: Cloning in Spain

The first Spanish Committee of Experts on Cloning, composed of scientists, jurists and sociologists, is finalising a report which supports legislative reform to lift the existing ban on cloning and allow it to go ahead in Spain for purely medicinal purposes. The committee, set up at the Bioethics Institute at the Foundation for Medical Science, has virtually completed its study, which is due for official release in June or thereabouts, pending completion of the legal proposal and a resolution of the sociological problem; its findings will be submitted to those in the Spanish Government and the European Union with responsibility for this issue and to other international institutions involved in the cloning issue. The report stresses that, when used for suitable purposes, cloning can be a tremendously useful technique, insofar as findings suggest that cloning techniques can be employed in creating tissue to cure certain diseases. However, it also takes the view that, when understood as an attempt to create identical human beings, cloning poses serious problems and cannot be readily endorsed.

Despite the fact that the contents of the report currently being finalised by the Spanish Committee of Experts on Cloning have not yet been released, can the Commission give its view on the extremely complex and controversial issue of cloning?

Answer given by Mr Santer on behalf of the Commission

(7 April 1999)

In February 1997, the Commission consulted its Group of advisers on the ethical implications of biotechnology which issued in May 1997 an opinion on ethical aspects of cloning techniques (Opinion No 9). This examined the different forms of cloning techniques and came to the conclusion that "any attempt to produce a genetically identical human individual by nuclear substitution from a human adult or child cell (reproductive cloning) should be prohibited".

The Commission's position is in line with the above mentioned opinion and, thus, clearly condemns human reproductive cloning. To this end, human reproductive cloning has been excluded by co-decision of the Parliament and the Council from both the fourth and the fifth framework programmes on research and technological development.

It should also be recalled that the European Council in Amsterdam (June 1997) adopted a declaration which emphasized the determination of the Member States to take all measures necessary to prohibit human cloning.

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