The views of the 80-year-old Baroness Warnock could sway some MPs as the House of Commons prepares to debate the Mental Capacity Bill, which critics describe as back-door euthanasia. Back in 1993 she sat on a House of Lords committee which backed a complete ban on euthanasia. In recent times she has changed her mind and last year she supported a private member's bill to legalise assisted suicide. She has also admitted that she allowed a GP to hasten the death of her husband, a former Oxford vice-chancellor, after he had been incapacitated by a lung condition in 1995.

The Korean technique involves gently squeezing an egg until the nucleus is squished out. The American team took this one step further and placed genetic material from the skin cell of an unrelated monkey in the enucleated egg -- an advance on the South Korean technique which used a cumulus cell from the surface of the same egg.

In an accompanying survey of religious views on stem cell research, "today's frontline controversy" in the "fractious relationship between science and religion", Nature cites Pope John Paul II as a key figure in the debate. Some ethicists might argue however, that it misconstrues his description of science and faith as two separate realms, as if they dealt with separate realities. The Pope actually describes them as two ways of knowing the very same reality. This misunderstanding reflects a complaint by a sociologist of religion at the University of California, San Diego, John Evans. He observes that scientists attending bioethics conferences rarely show any knowledge of religion, but "religious people are expected to have spent huge amounts of time learning all the science".