England issues a possibly-first-official-in-Europe one-year license to clone human embryos to produce stem cells.: Newcastle Center for Life scientists will use the resulting stem cells to ‘spawn’ human embryos ‘by inserting the nuclei from human skin or existing stem cells into human eggs, which have had their nuclei removed,’ hoping that the process, called therapeutic cloning, will speed up the hunt for cures for some diseases.

Eventually scientists hope they’ll be able to reprogram a skin cell from someone suffering from a disease so that it, when it’s reinserted, it will cure the disease. England will experience nearly as great an outcry as the U.S. from those who oppose this experimentation using human cells. Proponents argue the embryos are completely incapable of independent existence; opponents will say that doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile, China will be quietly creating miraculous cures from its stem cell research–without a wimper from the populace.