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All too human

4 March 2000

Greenpeace activists besieged the European Patent Office in Munich last week
after discovering the EPO had apparently granted a patent on a technique for
cloning people. Awarded to Austin Smith of the University of Edinburgh, the
patent describes methods of growing stem cells from animals and humans. The EPO
later apologised for failing to spot wording which extends the patent to human
cloning. It should have read: “A method of preparing a non-human transgenic
animal”, but clerks forgot to add the words “non-human”.

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