The Vatican announced late last week that the Third International Congress on Responsible Stem Cell Research has been cancelled. The conference, being organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life and scheduled for April 25-28, was to focus on clinical applications of adult and reprogrammed stem cells.
One of the conference organizers cited "logistical, organizational and financial factors" that forced the cancellation. Inside sources suggest that the conference was scrubbed because of an ongoing concern within the Academy that the prominence of advocates for human embryonic stem cell research may lead to scandal regarding the Church’s teaching.
Some of the invited speakers, including Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco, and keynote speaker George Daley, a stem cell scientist at Children's Hospital Boston in Massachusetts, while experts in the use of adult stem cells, are also involved in research using human embryonic stem cells. The previous two congresses had also included scientists who worked on such cells, without generating much controversy.
A formal explanation of the cancellation for the attendees is pending.
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