Vatican stem cell conference cancelled partly over keynote speaker George Daley from Boston

By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff

An international stem cell conference scheduled to take place next month at the Vatican has been cancelled, and the Catholic News Agency has reported that the choice of speakers, which included a prominent Boston embryonic stem cell researcher, was a factor.

Dr. George Q. Daley, a stem cell researcher at Childrens Hospital Boston, was scheduled to give the opening lecture at the Third International Congress on Responsible Stem Cell Research. Daley said in an interview that he received a brief e-mail late last week announcing that the conference had been cancelled and that an explanation would follow shortly.

Unnamed sources told the Catholic News Agency that the event, as planned, would have presented an unacceptably ambivalent stance on embryonic stem cell research. The Catholic Church opposes human embyronic stem cell research because it requires the destruction of embryos.

One unnamed member of the Pontifical Academy for Life told the news agency: The news of the cancellation of the Congress is an enormous relief to many members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who felt that the presence on its program of so many speakers, including the keynote speaker, committed to embryonic stem cell research, was a betrayal of the mission of the Academy and a public scandal.

The official reason for the cancellation of the conference is given on the website:

Due to serious economic and logistic-organizational reasons that have completely jeopardized the success of the 3rd International Congress on Responsible Stem Cell Research, the Organizers have decided to cancel the event, the website states.

In the preliminary program, the four-day meetings purpose is described as a focus on the clinical use of stem cells, with emphasis on the ethical aspects of their applications.

Daley said that the cancellation of the meeting is very disappointing. He said he had not been prohibited from speaking about embryonic stem cell research, but had been asked not to focus on that research in his talk. He said he had been planning to talk about embryonic stem cells in the context of the history of stem cell research and had been looking forward to the meeting.

I think there are a lot of issues on which even opponents of embyronic stem cell research can agree upon, which is important -- probably most critically in the importance of establishing stem cell medicines on a very rigorous basis of rigorous clinical trials, Daley said. Were all trying to fight aginst this premature marketing of unproven interventions to patients.

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Vatican stem cell conference cancelled partly over keynote speaker George Daley from Boston