UN experts will next week enter crisis talks on how to avoid a deeply polarised vote over human cloning, after two days of impassioned appeals both for and agaisnt the creation of embryonic stem cells to help end diseases from Aids to juvenile diabetes to Parkinson's. The US yesterday insisted that the world should ban all forms of human cloning, asserting that the cloning of embryos for their subequent destruction was an affront to human dignity, which turned "nascent human life into a resource or commodity to be mined and exploited".