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Leading Irish pro-life organisations have welcomed today's ruling by the European Court of Justice which has banned scientists from patenting stem cell techniques derived from the use of human embryos.

The EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that the law protects human embryos from any use that undermined human dignity - and wrote that their use "for purposes of scientific research was not patentable". The ruling is binding across all EU member states.

Youth Defence, who led public awareness campaigns which saw a massive rise in support for a ban on embryonic stem cell research, said that it "warmly welcomed" the EU Court ruling.

"Clearly the Court felt it could not ignore the unanimous scientific opinion which agrees that life begins at fertilisation, and that the destruction of the human embryo could not therefore be supported," said Rebecca Roughneen of Youth Defence. "The ruling is very specific: it says that 'a process which involves removal of a stem cell from a human embryos at the blastocyst stage, entailing the destruction of that embryo, cannot be patented'."

The EU judges had been asked by the German Federal Court to provide a ruling in a case involving a German scientist, Oliver Bruestle, who hoped to patent a method to create nerve cells from human embryonic stem cells. The German Court, (Bundesgerichtshof), hearing the case brought by Greenpeace against Mr Brüstle’s patent, referred the question to the EU Court seeking its interpretation of the phrase “human embryo” contained in an EU Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions.

The Court was also asked to rule on whether whether scientific research constituted "industrial or commercial purposes", and whether procedures that indirectly involved embryonic stem cells were patentable.

Ms Roughneen said that the EU Court's ruling that any human ovum after fertilisation constitutes a human embryo was of enormous significance, and would have positive implications for the campaign to ban embryonic stem cell research in Ireland. "We're pressing for the Irish government to introduce a ban on research on human embryos, and this ruling will certainly help that campaign," she told LifeSiteNews.

The Life Institute, who recently published an investigative report on the forces behind the push for embryonic stem cell research said that, while the EU had not always been a friend to the Culture of Life, the Court ruling was a victory for scientific ethics, for human rights, and for the human embryo.

A spokesman said that the world was continuing to turn away from embryonic stem cell research as it destroyed human life and offered no cures, and serious scientists were turning more and more to ethical adult stem cell research which was being used to treat patients successfully.

He added that the reaction of scientists who are involved in experiments on human embryos to the Court ruling was dishonest, in that they claimed that the potential to treat diseases was being curtailed by the ruling.

"It's simply untrue to claim such a limitation, especially when more than 70 conditions from cancer to spinal injuries are being treated by adult stem cell research," said the spokesperson. He added that EU funding for embryonic stem cell research would now need to be re-examined in the light of the EU Court ruling.

The German Bishops' Conference welcomed the ruling, calling it a "victory for human dignity".