The Canadian federal government has reintroduced its bill on assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and related matters. Last October, bill C-13, entitled 'an Act respecting assisted human reproduction and related research', was passed by the Canadian House of Commons by 149-109 votes, after almost ten years of debate and...
News that scientists in South Korea have managed to clone human embryos and to derive stem cells from one of them has unsurprisingly generated much debate about the politics, law and ethics of human cloning. South Korea has already passed a law prohibiting cloning for reproductive purposes; now the scientists...
Scientists in South Korea have extracted and grown stem cells from cloned, early human embryos, a breakthrough in 'therapeutic cloning' research. Using a modified version of the technique used to clone Dolly the sheep, the team, based at the Seoul National University, created 30 cloned human embryos. The researchers extracted...
The Italian Parliament has given its final approval to a controversial bill governing assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), said to be the most restrictive in Europe. The Chamber of Deputies voted 277-222 in favour of the bill, with three abstentions. The new law, which will come into force when it...
A report published by the Board of Science and Education of the British Medical Association (BMA) presents powerful evidence that smoking harms sexual and reproductive health in both men and women. The report, called 'Smoking and Reproductive Life', looked at both active and passive smoking by both sexes, and the...
A campaign has begun in the US state of California to include a bill in the November ballot to facilitate funding for embryonic stem (ES) cell research by establishing a three billion dollar bond. The bill is seen as a 'counter' to the stem cell policies of President George W...
Injections of a fat-regulating hormone help rats to lose weight by turning their fat-storing cells into fat-burning cells, say US and Swiss scientists. Rats injected with a gene that makes the hormone leptin displayed 'substantial weight loss' after just two weeks of therapy, say the researchers. They conclude that their...
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Stem cell hype?
by Juliet Tizzard
News from South Korea that scientists have successfully created cloned human embryos from which they have derived an embryonic stem cell line has been greeted largely with enthusiasm. Of course, there are those who will always object to the use of human embryos in stem cell research. But, as time...