Final Report (all chapters)

among Scandinavian countries; Sweden has embraced stem cell research and research cloning,
whereas Norway has adopted a much more cautious and restrictive approach. Similar differences
exist among Asian countries. These diverging legislative paths suggest that it would be
premature to envisage comprehensive international treaties in this area save for a ban on human
reproductive cloning.
Relatively few countries have adopted a regulatory approach or have created new regulatory
institutions. This may reflect important differences in national administrative systems and in
legal traditions, not to mention imperfect knowledge of these systems on our part. It appears that
in many cases, existing ministries have been given the authority to craft regulations in the area of
reproductive medicine and biomedical research. Switzerland is a case in point. The Australian,
Canadian, and British cases demonstrate that the delegation of legislative authority is a realistic
but not unproblematic legislative response. How these regulatory bodies can preserve their moral
authority without being perceived as unaccountable institutions is a question that has not yet
received an entirely satisfactory answer.
It has also become clear that neither the British HFEA nor its Australian and Canadian
cousins offer a template for building an analogous regulatory institution in the United States. The
HFEA decision-making process is probably too informal and not sufficiently transparent for the
U.S. public. Nor is an 18-member regulatory body likely to garner much support. The Australian
approach is more considerate of regional differences and could therefore be considered a better
fit, but it also reflects Australian peculiarities that would make it unsuitable to the U.S.
administrative context. Finally, the Canadian approach, though promising in many ways, is still
being implemented and cannot be properly evaluated. In short, while these three countries have
demonstrated the soundness and viability of a regulatory approach to reproductive medicine and
biomedical research, their respective approaches cannot easily be adapted to the U.S.
administrative and legal system.
179