Cloning and the Oviedo Convention: The Socio-cultural Construction of Regulation

In 1997, the Oviedo Convention, signed by most of the European Union (EU) member states (Germany and the United Kingdom were the most remarkable exceptions), banned ‘the creation of human embryos for research purposes’. At that time, this ban did not seem to be decisive for the future development of regenerative medicine (RM). It was only two months prior to the scheduled date for the signature of the Convention that the birth of ‘Dolly’ was announced to the world and therapeutic applications of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT, discussed previously in Chapter 5) had only just started to be envisioned.