OSLO– The world should quickly ban cloning of humans and only allow exceptions for strictly controlled research to help treat diseases such as diabetes or Alzheimer’s, a U.N. study said on Sunday. Without a ban, experts at the U.N. University’s Institute of Advanced Studies said that governments would have to prepare legal measures to protect clones from ‘potential abuse, prejudice and discrimination’. ‘A legally-binding global ban on work to create a human clone, coupled with freedom for nations to permit strictly controlled therapeutic research, has the greatest political viability of options available,’ the study said. ‘Whichever path the international community chooses it will have to act soon — either to prevent reproductive cloning or to defend the human rights of cloned individuals,’ said A.H. Zakri, head of the Institute, which is based in Yokohama, Japan. Almost all governments oppose human cloning and more than 50 have legislation outlawing cloning. But negotiations about an international ban collapsed in 2005 because of disagreements over research cloning, also known as therapeutic cloning. Research cloning can produce tissues that are a perfect genetic match of a person and so help grow cells to treat diseases such as strokes, spinal […]