French fears over bioethics law draft order

Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg, France's former Research Minister, has tabled a Bill to authorise research on therapeutic cloning and human embryo stem cells.

His initiative coincides with scientists' concern that a draft order under last year's bioethics law would ban the import and export of embryo tissue and cells for research purposes.

France's bioethics law forbids therapeutic cloning, which is punishable by seven years' imprisonment and a €100,000 (£68,000) fine, as well as reproductive cloning. But it authorises researchers to work on imported embryonic stem cells and paves the way for research on frozen human embryos surplus to requirement in in vitro fertility treatments. It also permits strictly controlled stem-cell research for an experimental five-year period.

Mr Schwartzenberg said that "the recent success of South Korean and British researchers marks a decisive stage towards regenerative medicine and cell therapies, which aim to replace cells that are deficient or insufficiently numerous by cell grafts".

Meanwhile, medical scientists are concerned that a draft order relating to the introduction of the bioethics law will prevent the import and export of cloned embryos. The order from the Ministry of Solidarity, Health and Family was leaked to the newspaper Le Monde .

Claude Soreau, a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Ethical Committee, said it was essential that embryos and embryonic cells be exchangeable between laboratories of different countries.

The order also states that applications for studies and research on human embryos will be scrutinised by a biomedicine agency, set up in May, which will assess whether the procedures are of "scientific relevance", and the conditions of their implementation "with regard to ethical principles and public health interest".

Marc Peschanski of the neuroplasticity and therapeutic unit of Inserm, France's national medical research institute, said in Le Monde : "Will it soon be necessary to conclude that the less frequent a disease is, the less the biomedicine agency will give authorisation?"