Jordan’s Stem-Cell Law Can Guide The Middle East
By Rana Dajani,
Nature
| 06. 11. 2014
Untitled Document
In January, Jordan passed a law to control research and therapy using human stem cells derived from embryos — the first such regulation in the Arab and Islamic region. I was part of the group headed by Abdalla Awidi Abbadi, director of the Cell Therapy Center at the University of Jordan in Amman, that initiated the call for the law and later drafted it. Stem-cell research is a hot topic for Jordan because of the kingdom’s status as a health-care hub that draws patients from abroad. It is already one of few countries in the Middle East with regulations for protecting people who participate in clinical trials. This latest law should serve as an example to other countries in the region.
The new rules ban private companies from using human embryonic stem (ES) cells in research or therapies. Such work will be allowed only in government organizations or publicly funded academic institutions in Jordan, which have higher levels of transparency than private firms and are supervised by the health ministry and a specialized committee. The law also bans...
Related Articles
By Nick Paul Taylor, BioSpace | 03.14.2024
A U.K. watchdog balked at the cost-effectiveness of Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ CRISPR-based sickle cell disease therapy Thursday, recommending against funding the treatment unless uncertainties can be cleared up satisfactorily.
The U.K. became the first country to authorize Vertex’s Casgevy (exagamglogene...
By Anna Collinson, Maryam Ahmed and Bella McShane, BBC | 03.12.2024
Women who freeze their eggs are being misled by some UK clinics about their chances of having a baby, a fertility charity says.
The Fertility Network was reacting to BBC analysis that found 41% of clinics offering the service privately...
By Isabelle Bartram, Guest Contributor
| 03.13.2024
Note: This article was originally published in February 2024 in issue 268 of the German-language journal Der Gen-ethische Informationsdienst (GID). It is also part of an English-language dossier on Heritable Human Genome Editing published at the same time. Minor edits have been made.
Calls for German embryo research
Pressure on the German Embryo Protection Act is growing. The scientific community is launching a renewed attack on the controversial law and demands access to embryos for so-called high-ranking research objectives. "Germline therapies" are...
By Andrew Joseph, STAT | 02.22.2024
In the years leading up to Russia’s invasion, Ukraine had become a burgeoning hub of clinical trials, particularly in oncology. The war put a hold on the vast majority of those studies.
But as the country marks two years this...