BEIJING, Sept. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- The scientific journal Nature on Friday made two clarifications, after a study was published last week on a new way of creating human stem cells without harming embryos.

The study by Advanced Cell Technology, a California biotech company, prompted critics charging that researchers overstated the implications of their work.

Nature editors acknowledge they erred in describing the study as "plucking single cells from human embryos" in a way to generate new stem cell lines "leaving the embryo intact."

A clarification noted that the researchers removed "multiple cells" from some of the embryos, and a following clarification pointed out that the experiments destroyed the embryos.

Dr. Lanza's study used 16 embryos donated by couples to grow two stem cell lines, but the paper by no means discussed the embryos' fate.

Had he taken only a single cell from each, many more embryos would have been needed. Nature, however, incorrectly implied that he had removed just a single cell.

"We're looking to see if the description is clear, but there is nothing wrong with the paper," Nature press officer, Ruth Francis, said yesterday.

Because stem cells can turn into virtually any type of human tissue, researchers hold promise for treating deadly or crippling diseases.

With the Bush administration refusing to fund research into new stem cell lines, the new process that extracted them without destroying the embryo excited the scientists. Enditem