PARIS - French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin told a medical ethics symposium in Paris last week that his government will introduce legislation permitting research on the human embryo for the purposes of "improving medically assisted procreation techniques" and promoting "the search for new therapies derived from stem cells."

But he stressed that "reproductive cloning" as distinct from "therapeutic cloning" would remain "strictly forbidden."

A bill is being drafted that will amend France's 1994 bioethics law, which prohibits both research on the human embryo and the therapeutic cloning of embryos for the cultivation of stem cells. However, it will not transpose the European Union biotechnology directive of July 6, 1998, into French law. (Paris is still negotiating with Brussels on aspects of the directive it considers ambiguous, if not quite unacceptable.) The bill will be presented to the cabinet in March and introduced into the National Assembly during the second quarter of next year.

In addition to the use of cells derived from surplus embryos produced in the course of medically assisted procreation attempts, the new legislation is expected to encourage research using stem cells obtained from blood in the umbilical cord. But Jospin pointed out that, should the use of umbilical cord blood cells fail, "these stem cells could be obtained, if necessary, through the transfer of somatic cells." Such therapeutic would be permitted for the purpose of manufacturing replacement human organs and tissue, he said.

By distinguishing between the reproduction of whole human beings and the reproduction of "spare parts" for the repair of defective human organs, the prime minister sought to forestall any accusations that he was condoning the replication of human beings or practices akin to eugenics - areas that dominate the often emotional debate on biomedical ethics in France.

Not afraid to pull the heartstrings himself, Jospin observed that "stem cells . . . have been talked of as the cells of hope. Thanks to them, treatments might become available tomorrow for diseases that remain incurable today." He went on to refer to "immobile children who will at last be able to get about" and "broken men and women who will be able to stand up again." But he acknowledged, "French society wants advances in scientific knowledge and their potential applications in the field of human health to be circumscribed by fundamental values, while not rendered impossible by them."

To that end, an independent high committee will be set up to oversee this type of research and ensure that strictly defined protocols are drawn up and adhered to. In view of the time taken to draft new legislation and the fact that scientific research was advancing at a pace that left legislators always trying to catch up, Jospin said this new scientific body's judgments on future discoveries and technological advances would have the force of law.

Reactions to the prime minister's speech were predictably mixed, even within the medical/scientific community, with some doctors suggesting that the use of surplus embryos meaning they were being treated as some kind of raw material and others warning of the danger that using stem cells might induce cancers and that miracle cures for neurological or cardiovascular diseases were not an immediate prospect. But research minister Roger-Girard Schwartzenberg sought to allay some fears by asserting that "it will only be possible to conduct research on human embryos under extremely strict conditions: the embryo must not have reached the stage of cell differentiation, which occurs after the sixth or seventh day; the therapeutic objective must be impossible to achieve by any other method; and the research protocol must be submitted for prior authorization by the ministers of health and research after an independent high committee has made its view public."