Aggregated News
A National Health and Medical Research Council panel met in Canberra on Friday to consider applications from two groups.
Teams from Monash University and the Australian Stem Cell Centre have each joined with Sydney IVF to submit licence requests.
The teams want permission to use eggs left over from fertility treatment to clone human embryonic stem cells.
Scientists would use the stem cells to study a range of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer.
The licence applications are the first under therapeutic cloning laws that came into force last year.
They are likely to reignite fierce debate among political leaders, religious groups and ethicists.
Australian laws forbid licence holders from joining a sperm and an egg to create an embryo.
The licences, if granted, would allow only the use of a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
The embryos are created by fusing spare, unfertilised IVF eggs with genetic material -- a normal or diseased skin cell, for example, -- from another person.
The cloned embryos would be destroyed once stem cells had been collected or before...
Teams from Monash University and the Australian Stem Cell Centre have each joined with Sydney IVF to submit licence requests.
The teams want permission to use eggs left over from fertility treatment to clone human embryonic stem cells.
Scientists would use the stem cells to study a range of diseases, including Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer.
The licence applications are the first under therapeutic cloning laws that came into force last year.
They are likely to reignite fierce debate among political leaders, religious groups and ethicists.
Australian laws forbid licence holders from joining a sperm and an egg to create an embryo.
The licences, if granted, would allow only the use of a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer.
The embryos are created by fusing spare, unfertilised IVF eggs with genetic material -- a normal or diseased skin cell, for example, -- from another person.
The cloned embryos would be destroyed once stem cells had been collected or before...