MEDICAL ASSOCIATIONS URGE RESTRAINT ON CLONING RESEARCH

February 28, 1997

PARIS (Reuter) - The World Medical Association, an umbrella group of medical professional groups from around the world, urged doctors and researchers Sunday voluntarily to refrain from attempts to clone humans.

Cloning, once the stuff of science fiction, was brought closer to reality this year when geneticists in Scotland cloned a sheep, which they named Dolly, from a single cell of another sheep.

The experiment spurred fears of a repetition of Nazi attempts to engineer a human ``master race.''

The Association, which groups nearly 70 medical associations from around the world, issued the appeal at the close of a four-day meeting of its executive council in Ferney-Voltaire, eastern France, association spokesman Nigel Duncan said.

The council voted to urge doctors and researchers ``to abstain voluntarily from participating in the cloning of human beings until the scientific, ethical and legal issues have been fully considered by doctors and scientists and any necessary controls put in place,'' Duncan said.