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FROM: Newsday (New York, NY) December 8, 2001 Saturday NASSAU AND SUFFOLK EDITION SECTION: NEWS, Pg. A10 HEADLINE: In Support of Cloning; Nobel laureates want it for medical research BYLINE: REUTERS " This year's Nobel laureates in medicine Friday strongly supported the cloning of human embryos to produce stem cells for medical research. "There are real advantages to therapeutic stem cell cloning and their use toward the treatment of degenerative diseases which would allow the generation of cells that could replace damaged tissues," British Nobel laureate Paul Nurse told a news conference in Stockholm. Stem cells, or "master cells," have the potential to turn into any human cells and hold immense, though still unproven, promise for treating many diseases, including Parkinson's, diabetes and heart disease. Nurse and compatriot Timothy Hunt and Leland Hartwell of the United States received the 2001 Nobel prize for physiology or medicine for helping understand how cells divide, a key to finding out why some go haywire, as in cancer cells. Meanwhile, more than 100 Nobel laureates have signed an appeal criticizing the climate change and missile defense policies of the United States under President George W. Bush. "It is time for the industrialized world to take responsibility for being a member of the world community and stop thinking in terms of nations," Canadian John Polanyi, who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry and initiated the appeal, said in an interview. Among the appeal's signatories are exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, South African bishop Desmond Tutu and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the former Soviet Union. Almost 200 of the world's 225 living winners of the Nobel prizes, first awarded in 1901, are gathering in Stockholm and Oslo for ceremonies commemorating the centenary of the accolades bestowed upon people of merit in medicine, physics, chemistry, economics, literature and peace. In an indirect reference to the national missile defense system planned by the United States as a shield against attacks from what it has called rogue states, the appeal said it was time to "turn our backs on the unilateral search for security in which we seek shelter behind walls." Bush has rejected the Kyoto protocol intended to curb industrialized countries' emissions of so-called greenhouse gases, which some scientists say are the main factor behind global warming." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn