Germany's new Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan recently reiterated her vehement support of Germany's highly restrictive embryonic stem cell law, maintaining the same hard stance she took during the campaign for the hotly contested September national elections.In an interview last month in the daily Berliner Zeitung, Schaven reaffirmed that the new government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel would not support any effort to change its current stem cell law. The four-year-old law, one of the most restrictive in Europe, bans production of embryonic stem cells within Germany and only allows import of cells created before January 1, 2002.Researcher Miodrag Stojkovic left Germany in 2002 to do embryonic stem cell research at University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom. He said he remains in close personal contact with several colleagues in Germany, who are generally saddened by the current legal situation. "Germany is now a lonely island in...

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