Germany has edged closer to removing a five-year blanket ban on embryonic stem cell research, according to a report on BioPharmaReporter.com. By a narrow majority, the country’s 24-member National Ethics Council voted last week to effectively overturn a law put in place by parliament in 2002, which bans the use of human embryonic stem cell [Sign in to read the full article...]

By Jim Warren Editor & Publisher On Wednesday, July 25, Transplant News and NATCO, The Organization for Transplant Professionals, will present an important 90-minute interactive audioconference that will provide U.S. transplant programs with detailed information on how to comply with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Final Rule that went into effect June [Sign in to read the full article...]

The United Network for Organ Sharing has issued for public comment four policy proposals recommending guidelines for the practice of living kidney and liver donation and transplantation and minimum criteria for granting designated program status to transplant programs that perform these operations. The proposals address issues concerning the medical evaluation, consent and follow-up of living [Sign in to read the full article...]

Scientists at the institute directed by J. Craig Venter, a pioneer in sequencing the human genome, announced in late June that they had successfully transplanted the genome of one species of bacteria into another. “This is equivalent to changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by inserting a new piece of [PC] software,” Dr. Venter [Sign in to read the full article...]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has developed a brochure for transplant recipients, warning them of their increased risk of suffering the more severe repercussions of West Nile Virus, if infected. Because medicines taken by transplant recipients can make it hard to fight infections, those patients may develop the severe forms of WNV disease, [Sign in to read the full article...]