GM baby report spurs new law

Reports of genetically modified babies in the United States have lent urgency to the Government's moves to legislate.

The Government is working on melding two bills covering gene and reproductive technology, with a cabinet paper planned for the end of the month.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said yesterday: "We are concerned ... as all Western societies are. There is a gap in the law."

But it was a difficult area in which to get the legislation right.

"It's an area of the law where technology and science are moving well ahead of our capacity to rewrite law, but we will have the best stab at itwe can."

It has been reported that the first genetically modified human babies were born in New Jersey after genes from the eggs of donor women were added to the eggs of infertile women.

Up to 30 children were born as an unintended result of the experimental programme at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Science designed to help the infertile.

Tests confirmed that two of 15 healthy babies produced by the technique were carrying genetic material from the birth mother, the father and the woman who donated an egg.

Bioethicists labelled the practice human cloning and called for experiments to stop while the community discussed the implications.

Two pieces of legislation dealing with human cloning are before Parliament.

Labour MP Dianne Yates' Human Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill, which would ban the cloning of human embryos, has been before the health select committee since 1996.

In 1998, the previous Government introduced the Assisted Human Reproduction Bill, which also calls for cloning to be banned.

Helen Clark said that when the laws were first proposed there was a feeling that cloning was almost a "science fiction fantasy which was years away."

"It is a here-and-now issue. If it is possible for it to happen in the States, it is possible to happen here."

- NZPA

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