The battle over who will control Spain's first public stem cell bank came to an end last Friday (April 30). The country's new Socialist leaders and allied officials in the state of Andalusia agreed to simultaneously drop dueling lawsuits over the bank, which the previous conservative government had claimed violated constitutional rules.
In October last year, the Spanish Parliament approved a new law on assisted reproduction that contemplated the creation of a national center to store and manage embryonic stem cell lines. But when the government became aware that the Andalusian state government had approved its own law on embryo research and oversaw the creation of its own regional center, it filed a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court on grounds that the Andalusian center was unconstitutional.
Shortly afterwards, Andalusia replied by filing its own lawsuit against the Spanish government saying the national law was a “flagrant invasion of regional competencies.”
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