Sabine Louët

The French government has proposed changes to its 1994 Bioethics law to allow research on human embryos and facilitate the development of new therapies from work on embryonic stem cells (ESCs). Under the amended law, researchers will be able to derive stem cells from "spare" embryos leftover from in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, and the use of nuclear transfer technology will be allowed to develop therapeutic applications from ESCs (therapeutic cloning). However, reproductive cloning will remain strictly prohibited. Although the ethics advisory committee to the European Commission stated in November that legalizing therapeutic cloning would be "premature," France looks to be following the UK, which introduced similar legislation in August (Nat. Biotechnol. 18, 1034, 2000;MEDLINE). The French government also plans to create an advisory Human Reproductive Medicine Agency—similar to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in the UK—to evaluate and authorize research on human reproduction, developmental biology, and genetics.