Yeah, depends a bit on which country in Europe, the ethical consequences of embryo derived stem cells, or the ESLs as we call them. I guess in general politics in the U.S. is much more colored by religious feelings than it is in most of Europe, even in Italy or Spain, and in Northern European countries like England or Holland or Germany religion has become unlinked from politics. I think we’re allowed to do a lot more with embryos than our colleagues here in the U.S.

So they differ from country to country. At the moment Holland actually has a coalition government where two of the three parties have a religious background, so they try to have some rules. In practice I don’t think we can derive, for instance, stem cell lines from human embryos under certain conditions, which the N.I.H. does not allow --researchers.

Hans Clevers obtained his MD degree in 1984 and his PhD degree in 1985 from the University Utrecht, the Netherlands. His postdoctoral work (1986-1989) was done with Cox Terhorst at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute of the Harvard University, Boston, USA.

From 1991-2002 Hans Clevers was Professor in Immunology at the University Utrecht and, since 2002, Professor in Molecular Genetics. Since 2002, he is director of the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht.

Hans Clevers has been a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000 and is the recipient of several awards, including the Dutch Spinoza Award in 2001, the Swiss Louis Jeantet Prize in 2004, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Katharine Berkan Judd Award in 2005, the Israeli Rabbi Shai Shacknai Memorial Prize in 2006, and the Dutch Josephine Nefkens Prize for Cancer Research and the German Meyenburg Cancer Research Award in 2008. He obtained an ERC Advanced Investigator grant in 2008. He is Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur since 2005.

http://www.hubrecht.eu/research/clevers/leader.html