The UK proposal is far less restrictive and more far-reaching in its scope than the US guidelines. Recommendations for embryonic stem cell research were put forward by the Chief Medical Officer in England, Professor Liam Donaldson on August 16. British scientists will be given the right to clone human cells. This involves taking a human egg and inserting a nucleus from another cell. The resulting cell then acts as a normally fertilised egg and develops into an embryo.
Scientists can obtain stem cells from the cloned embryos.
The Blair government has announced its acceptance of the guidelines and legislation facilitating them will be presented to the British parliament before the end of the year. Holland and France are expected to announce their guidelines permitting the use of embryonic stem cells in the next few months. Even though the first embryonic stem cells were discovered in 1998, a number of biotechnology companies have already emerged to exploit the potentially lucrative discoveries. The NIH announcement was greeted positively by Wall Street, with a number of biotech companies based on stem cell research making considerable gains. The stocks of Aastrom Biosciences Inc. of Ann Arbor, Michigan rose by 71 percent and StemCells Inc. of Sunnyvale, California by 37 percent.