Senator fights plan for stem cell bank

NATIONAL Party Senate leader Ron Boswell has attacked a proposal to compulsorily centralise the storage of all stem cell lines in one bank.

In a submission to the Government-sponsored inquiry into embryo research and cloning, Senator Boswell said such a bank would be impractical and amount to nationalising research in the area.

The Australian Stem Cell Centre in Melbourne had called for more public funding "to set up and control every single stem cell line in Australia", he said.

The idea of a single centre was presumably to store stem cell lines for use by researchers and in potential therapies. If the aim was for patients to be able to look for genetic matches, the bank would have to hold millions of lines.

"This is a cross between nationalising stem cell research and creating an all-powerful monopoly," Senator Boswell said.

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