NORWEGIAN GOV’T CONTINUES PRO-LIFE LAW REGARDING STEM CELL RESEARCH

OSLO, July 8, 2002 (LSN.ca) – The Norwegian government presented a bill to Parliament yesterday proposing a permanent ban on therapeutic cloning as a method to produce embryonic stem cells for medical research.  The bill also proposes to maintain the 1994-established prohibition on research on human embryos. Moreover, the government notes that the “bill also proposes to clarify that this prohibition includes research on stem cell lines created by isolating and culturing stem cells from human embryos.”  The Norwegian government press release notes that stem cells created from “spare embryos after IVF-treatment or embryos created by therapeutic cloning” raise “several difficult ethical concerns.”  The release concludes, “Because research on adult stem cells does not raise the same ethical concerns as research on embryonic stem cells, the Government wants to support this type of research.”  See the full Norwegian gov’t release at:  https://www.odin.dep.no/hd/engelsk/news/042071-070037/index-dok000-b-n-a.html