Societal Debate on Cloning
Societal Debate on Cloning
1. Introduction
When the birth of the cloned sheep Dolly became headline news in February 1997, cloning instantly turned into a heated topic for debate all over the world. Almost three years on, it seemed the right moment to collect and share the experiences gained within various countries with this debate on cloning. For this aim the Rathenau Institute, the Dutch parliamentary technology assessment organization, set up a one-day international symposium on November 19, 1999 in Amsterdam, with speakers from three continents and seven different countries: Denmark, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, The Netherlands, United States, and South Korea. All speakers were actively involved in organizing the policymaking process and public debate on cloning.
This article provides a summary of the presentations given at the symposium and an analysis of the results. In particular, the relationship between the political and public debate is discussed. It is concluded that in Italy, South Korea and the United States that relationship was weak. The political system in the other four European countries - Great Britain, Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands - did pay attention to the public debate. The way in which this was done differed from country to country.
2. The morning session: Switzerland, Denmark, United States and Italy
During the morning session experiences of four countries - Switzerland, the US, Denmark and Italy - with the debate on cloning were compared, in conjunction with the political aspects of the debate.
Switzerland
At the time the birth of Dolly was reported in the media, Switzerland was in the grip of a referendum on biotechnology, which was initiated by environmental activists and animal welfare organizations. The initiative asked for a ban on the creation of transgenic animals, including medical laboratory mice, a ban on releasing genetically manipulated plant species to be planted in the open, and a ban on the patenting of living material. According to Richard Braun, Vice-Chairman of the Task Group on Public Perceptions of the European Federation of Biotechnology and Professor Emeritus General Microbiology, Switzerland experienced a small "Dolly dip" as the number of people that thought favorably about genetic modification suddenly decreased around April 1997. The effect was temporary though, and the horror stories in the media rapidly disappeared from the front pages and from the minds of the public. Two main reasons can be found. First, the Swiss constitution already prohibited the reproductive cloning of humans....