German Parliament changes stem cell law

An update to the story I blogged about a couple of months ago regarding proposed changes to Germany’s stem cell laws. The proposed changes were just approved.

In brief, under German law (the Stem Cell Act of 2002) no embryos can be destroyed for research, but they were allowed to import embryonic stem cells lines created before 2002. But, of course those stem cell lines would have been created with inferior technology and knowledge, so scientists from the German Research Foundation lobbied to get the laws changed slightly to allow importation of more recent stem cell lines.

The law was passed yesterday, so now embryonic stem cell lines created before May 2007 are allowed to be imported into German.

It’s a minor loosening of very strict laws, but I guess any improvement is good news.