EU court bars stem cell patents when embryos destroyed, Christians hail ruling

Europe’s top court has banned patenting any stem-cell process that involves destroying a human embryo, dealing what some scientists said was a “devastating” blow to an emerging field of medical research. Researchers fear the ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) will hobble development in an area of science that could provide a range 21st-century medicines for diseases from Parkinson’s to blindness.

Stem-cell technology is controversial because some cell lines are derived from embryos. The ECJ decision now endorses widespread protection of human embryos by blocking patents. “A process which involves removal of a stem cell from a human embryo at the blastocyst stage, entailing the destruction of that embryo, cannot be patented,” it said. Blastocyst is the stage just before implantation in the womb, when the embryo consists of around 80 to 100 cells.

“We wanted a fundamental decision on how the protection of human embryos is to be laid out under EU patenting law,” said Christoph Then, a Greenpeace official, in Luxembourg. “The court has… said that ethics take priority over commercial interests.” Read more at www.reuters.com