The prospect of human cloning has been one of the most emotive and divisive issues to face UN negotiators and the international community in recent years. Despite widespread consensus amongst nations regarding the desirability of banning reproductive cloning, efforts to negotiate an international convention ground to a halt due to fundamental divisions regarding so-called research or therapeutic cloning. Research cloning, viewed by some as a possible source of new therapeutic remedies for degenerative diseases, see by others as unethical where it involves the production of embryos as a source of stem cells upon which such therapies are based
