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Published online 12 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.819
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Open-air demo supports UK embryo research
Rally aims to secure political backing for new embryology law.
Politicians, scientists and patient groups demonstrated outside Britain's Parliament today to show their support for a new bill that looks set to give researchers greater options for working with human embryonic cells, potentially paving the way for the development of therapies against diseases such as Parkinson's.
Several dozen demonstrators gathered near the Parliament building, waving placards saying "Stem cell research — ethical and essential".
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Unfortunately, here in Western Australia a very similar piece of legislation was last week rejected by a conscience vote in the Upper House of the state parliament, leaving us out of step with most of the rest of the country in terms of the use of discarded or donated embryos for therapeutic stem cell research. There appears to have been a carefully controlled campaign to influence conservative politicians, with many letters to the local press citing Yamanaka's work on transforming fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cells as meaning that all embryo stem cell research is now redundant. Intriguingly, many referred to him as "Shinya Yamanaka" implying that he was a personal colleague. The real outcome (apart from a political one of forcing an early state election) is of course that basic research in this field will stagnate.