Thursday (August 27) saw the European Court of Human Rights uphold an Italian law against the donation of human embryos for scientific research.<br /><br /> By 16 to one, the judges in Strasbourg rejected an argument that the law violated the right to privacy or private property.<br /><br /> The case was brought by an Italian woman, Adelina Parillo, who with her partner Stefano Rolla, a film director, created five embryos in 2002.<br /><br /> They were frozen for future implantation but Rolla was then killed in a suicide bombing in Iraq in 2003. The woman decided not to have a family but to try to donate the embryos for research into diseases.<br /><br /> However Italy’s law dating from 2004 bans the destruction of human embryos, outlawing most assisted fertility techniques including the freezing of embryos for future use.<br /><br /> Even though much of the law had previously been struck down, the European court ruled that Italy had not contravened Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to respect for priv
