[Pflienews] PharmFacts E-News Update: EU OK's embryo killing patent; unlicensed abortionist pleads guilty in CA

[PFLI PharmAid Center]

*PharmFacts E-News Update -- 2 Dec 2008 AD
*

*EU Rejects Patent that "Necessarily Involves the Use and Destruction of 
Human Embryos"*

 By Hilary White

December 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- The EU's patent office has ruled 
that under the provisions of the European Patent Convention (EPC), it 
cannot offer a patent for the so-called "WARF/Thomson stem cell 
application" on the grounds that it would involve the destruction of 
human embryos. The application is for a method for obtaining embryonic 
stem cell cultures from primates, including humans, and was filed by the 
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) in 1995.

The patent office board of appeal ruled that it is not possible to grant 
a patent for an invention which necessarily involves the use and 
destruction of human embryos. The EPC does not allow patenting 
inventions whose commercial exploitation would be contrary to public 
order or morality.

Wesley Smith, an American lawyer and writer on bioethics issues, said 
that the decision is remarkable in that it is the first time there has 
been an indication from the EU that the moral status of the human embryo 
is in question.

While a ruling from the patent office does not outlaw the use of embryos 
in research, Smith writes that it will "send a chill to those who would 
use embryos commercially."

"In any event," Smith wrote, "let us hear no more about religious 
zealots imposing their will on rational modernists. Europe is as secular 
a culture as you will find in the world."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Germany Drops Opposition to EU Embryo Research Funding
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jul/06072407.html

View Story on LifeSiteNews.com 
<http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/viewonsite.html?articleid=08120103>
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*Clinic Owner Pleads to Practicing Without a License*
*http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11115650 
<http://nvs.all.org/sendstudio/link.php?M=22016&N=597&L=2930&F=H>*
Mercury News
LOS ANGELES -- A Los Angeles woman has pleaded no contest to practicing 
medicine without a license at six clinics she owned in Southern 
California. Bertha Bugarin pleaded to seven felony counts on Monday in 
Los Angeles Superior Court. She was also ordered to pay $7,800 in 
restitution to 16 former patients. District attorney spokeswoman Shiara 
Davila says Bugarin performed medical procedures when physicians were 
not in the office. Davila says nine counts will be dismissed when 
Bugarin is sentenced as part of a plea agreement. She faces 10 years in 
state prison when she is sentenced Jan. 20.

--from ALL Today 12/2/08
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