Paris, 22/08/2000 (Agence Europe) - "Given the stakes involved, one may consider it would have been wiser to await the opinion of the European Group on Ethics. But from a strictly legal point of view, the British are in no way in contradiction with Community law, which does not formally ban reproductive cloning". This was the view expressed by Noëlle Lenoir, President of the European Group on Ethics, in an interview published by Le Journal du Dimanche of 20 August concerning the intention of the British authorities to authorise the cloning of human embryos, solely for therapeutic purposes. Ms Lenoir, who recalled that the European directive of 1998 on patents bans any industrial or commercial use of embryos, added, on the subject of the group's meeting scheduled for 15 November: "We shall perhaps propose taking things in stages, with focus on the precautionary principle (…). Many things will be done under pressure from patients and industry. But it is the function of the ethics group to highlight the risks involved in any progress". (See EUROPE of 3/4 July, p.15, on the subject of the opinion that the Ethics Group is preparing on research and applications involving human stem cells). In the interview, Ms Lenoior also recalls that a British law dated 1990 allows the creation of embryos for research, and that the Donaldson report indicated that 118 human embryos had thus been produced between 1991 and 1998;