1/15/2002
PARIS, Jan 15, 2002 (AP WorldStream
via COMTEX) -- French lawmakers opened debate Tuesday on a government-sponsored
bill that would allow embryonic research to help the sick but maintain
a ban on cloning.
The proposal by France's Socialist-led
government, which will not be voted on for several months, would allow
scientists to obtain stem cells from frozen embryos created during in-vitro
fertilization. Researchers must seek couples' authorization to use embryos
not implanted in the womb.
The bill specifies that research
on the cells must be focused purely on treating ailments, not on cloning,
and says scientists must first clear their research with a special government
agency to be set up under the proposal.
Human embryonic research has been
illegal in France since 1994.
The proposal would maintain a ban
on any attempt at cloning embryos to create babies. It also would forbid
so-called therapeutic cloning, where embryos are cloned for their stem
cells and then destroyed.
Stem cells can develop into all sorts
of specialized body tissue, and the hope is that they can be used as replacement
tissue to treat a variety of ailments. But no one has found a way to harvest
them without destroying embryos - a process that critics, including opponents
of abortion, contend is immoral.
Conservative President Jacques Chirac
has warned that therapeutic cloning could eventually lead to efforts to
clone a baby. Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin supported maintaining
the ban on therapeutic cloning in an effort to build a consensus on the
bill.
Conservative lawmakers are expected
to demand tougher restrictions.
Research Minister Roger-Gerard Schwartzenberg
said the government's measures "would open the way for a medical revolution"
and lead to new treatments for incurable diseases.
Many researchers believe that embryonic
stem cells hold the promise of creating new organs or cells to replace
or renew ailing hearts, livers and other organs. Some earlier laboratory
studies have suggested that embryonic stem cells could be directed to transform
into curative cells for such diseases as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or diabetes.
Copyright 2002, Bioresearch Online
By NATHALIE SCHUCK
Associated Press Writer