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Strasbourg - Today MEPs from different political groups and different countries asked not to finance research with embryos and embryonic stem cells under the new EU-research framework program Horizon 2020. Within the next weeks the different committees of the European Parliament will vote on the Commissions proposal.

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Peter Liese: Improved readability of package leaflets helps patients

Pharmacovigilance in the EU is going to be improved and package leaflets will be more readable, the European Parliament decided today in Strasbourg.

In 2011 it emerged that the drug "Mediator" by the company Servier is responsible for at least 500 deaths (other estimations even assume up to 2000 cases). Experts had already warned about the drug's dangers in 1998. In 2003, the producer already decided not to apply for a new permit for the Spanish and Italian market, supposedly for economic reasons. Today we know that this statement was pretext. However, due to the at that time insufficient legal situation no further inquiries were made. "This scandal has shaken many patients across Europe. With today's decision, we solve the current shortcomings in the EU pharmacovigilance and protect patients", says Peter Liese, Coordinator for the EPP in the Committee on Environment and Health.

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Peter Liese: Medical urgency rather than financial aspects have to decide about donation / Violation of basic ethical principles undermines trust and harms the patients

Strasbourg - With a vast majority, the European Parliament today demanded to bindingly establish the principle of unpaid donation. In today's voting, the delegates primarily focused on cell and tissue transplantations because the laws in this field are less strict than for organ transplantations. The EU institutions had already established the principal of unpaid and voluntary organ donation as well as a legally explicit prohibition of organ trade in a directive in 2010.