MELBOURNE, Australia, OCT. 9, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- In the wake of
international criticism, patents lodged in Europe by a Melbourne company
for human-pig embryos will be withdrawn, the firm reportedly announced today.

The chief executive officer of Stem Cell Sciences, Peter Mountford, said
the firm's patents pending in Europe would not be pursued, while those
pending in the United States would be changed so they cannot be used in
human research, The Age Online reported.

"Quite rightly Greenpeace has picked up that this claim, these particular
claims, do not exclude the possibility of human reproductive cloning,"
Mountford said, according to The Age. "We have been through this process
before with Greenpeace, and this time, as in the past, we will modify those
claims to exclude that possibility."

The patents, submitted jointly by SCS and American firm Biotransplant,
involved transferring a human cell's nucleus into a pig's ovum to allow it
to revert to a potentially useful type of stem cell, the online service said.

These embryonic stem cells have possible future human applications, in
helping regrow organs, and other applications such as cloning animals.

SCS only ever intended to use the technology to clone animals, Mountford
said, The Age Online reported.

During research the human-pig embryos were reportedly allowed to grow to 32
cells. They were later discarded.

Mountford said that, "in the extreme theoretical sense," if the embryos
were able to develop, and could be implanted into a woman successfully,
they would have become a human, according to The Age.

They would not share any genomic DNA with pigs, Mountford said.

Bioethicists in Europe and elsewhere were reportedly deeply concerned with
the patents though because they believed they devalued human life, The Age
noted.

University of Melbourne law professor Loane Skene said she believed there
was nothing in Victorian law that would make the practice of inserting
human DNA into a pig's ovum illegal, The Age said.
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