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European Weblog: Stem Cells and the Czech Republic

8 December 2006
Tags: Czech Republic, stem cells

Stem Cells and the Czech Republic

Updated 8 December 2006

In the article "Navigating the Embryonic Stem-Cell Maze," (1 December 2006) the final sentence of the third paragraph under the subhead "The European policy maze" read, "A June 2006 law formalised the Czech regulations and authorised nuclear transfer experiments for therapeutic cloning."

But following the publication of the article we received the following note from Dagmar Pohunková, a member of the Bioethics Commission of the Council for Research and Development for the Czech Republic. Pohunková wrote,

"

The so called "therapeutical cloning"--production of human embryos for research by nuclear transfer--is in the Czech republic not legal. The Czech Republic has adopted the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Oviedo 1997) and the Additional Protocol banning cloning of human embryos in 2001. To create human embryos in vitro is allowed for assisted reproduction only as infertility treatment.

The law No.227/2006 (26 April 2006) regulates the use of "surplus, left-over" embryos for human stem-cell research under the condition of an informed consent of both donors of the respective gametes.A specific board has been established for the ethical evaluation and control of every project in this field.

"

So we studied the law (in translation), solicited some other opinions, and p changed the wording so that the sentence now reads "A June 2006 law formalised the Czech regulations to authorise work with surplus embryos but forbids the creation of new embryos for research."

We regret the error, but we learned some things about the process. Here's a short, unofficially translated part of the Czech law (No. 227/2006);

§ 209b (what is not allowed)
a) to create human embryos for other purposes then for transfer to female
organism
b) to use for experiments human embryos or hESCs without previous
permission from the Board
c) to export human embryos/hESCs without permission from the Board
d) to transfer human embryos to the uterus of other animal species
e) to transfer human genom to the cells of other species and vice versa
f) to perform manipulations leading to the creation of novel human individual (reproductory cloning)

What is interesting about the Czech law is that, while it does not ban somatic cell transfer experiments unless these are equated with the creation of human embryos. Explicitly. As a Czech stem-cell expert wrote in an email, "My interpretation of the Czech law was that it is allowed to transfer nuclei to human embryonic stem cells/already existing 'surplus' early human embryos (which might be one-cell embryos) and use stem cells/embryos modified in such way to produce specific (e.g., patient-specific) cells, which is 'somatic cell nuclear transfer' according to my definition of that word."

- Posted by Jim Austin

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