The European Parliament's Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety is set to vote on a proposal to establish a single European market in advanced therapy medicinal products.

A vote in favour of such a market on Tuesday 30 January would mean that those bringing the latest advanced forms of medical treatment (gene therapy, cell therapy and tissue engineering) to the market would only need one central authorisation for their products to be accepted in all 27 Member States of the European Union.

Christian Action Research and Education (CARE) for Europe has come out in support of the principle behind the proposal, claiming it will help patients who suffer from diseases that have until now been incurable to gain faster access to treatment.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), however, has said it is concerned that the Commission's proposal does not contain certain ethical safeguards which were included in earlier legislation (eg Patents Directive and Clinical Trials Directive).

SPUC is urging its members to lobby MEPS to exclude unethical products from the legislation, including:

1) Exclusion of products that use embryonic or foetal cells
2) Exclusion of products that involve inheritable germ line modification
3) Exclusion of products that use human-animal chimeras or hybrids
4) Guarantee that all tissue and cell donations are made on a voluntary and unpaid basis

The Church of Scotland last week spoke out against the use of human-animal hybrid embryos.

"Christian teaching on compassion for the sick welcomes and indeed stimulates scientific research in medicine, but always within moral limits. Some experiments, no matter how medically useful, would be unethical. Research with animal-human cloned embryos would breach moral norms," said the Church of Scotland in a statement released last Thursday.

"It is highly speculative scientifically, decades from any clinical application, and other methods exist to the same end. It is both unethical and unnecessary. Here is a proper limit for research."