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I apologize if this is old news, but I didn't find it in the archive: In the 5 AUG 99 issue of the journal "Nature", there is a news article reporting that the American Cancer Society (ACS) has withdrawn from the 31 member Patients' Coalition for Urgent Research (CURe). You will remember that CURe is the coalition of patient and research advocacy groups lobbying the US Congress to support research on stem cells (this was in the archive). Apparently the ACS action is due to pressure from the Catholic Church. On 18 May, the ACS got a letter from the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the National Conference of Catholic Bishops urging the ACS not to participate. Also in May, about 100 lay people in the Maryland area withdrew from a fund-raising event saying that they could not support the ACS while it backed stem-cell research and several thousands of dollars in pledges were lost. :) In typical spokesman-ese, Greg Donaldson, spokesman for ACS, says that the ACS is only now formulating a position on stem-cell research, and thus "it is impossible for us to have reversed our position". (I wonder then why they felt it necessary to "withdraw".) =:P -- Bryan Arendall