JOHN Howard has ordered his office to investigate the "apparent misrepresentation" of US research on curing crippled rats by the embryonic stem-cell lobby in Australia.

Ministers, MPs, scientists and doctors accused leading embryonic stem-cell research proponent Alan Trounson of misleading parliamentarians and the public with a video of a crippled rat walking through the use of embryonic stem cells.

Yesterday the Prime Minister's office said John Howard was "disturbed" by the revelation in The Australian yesterday that the crippled rat was fixed with "germ cells" taken from aborted fetuses five to nine weeks old and not from embryonic stem cells covered in the bill before parliament.

Professor Trounson said it was true the rat's cure did not come from the five-day-old fertilised eggs which would be made available for research under the embryonic stem-cell research bill but from "germ cells".

Yesterday the US researcher who worked on the rats' spinal cords, Douglas Kerr, of the John Hopkins Institute in Baltimore, said all his research used germ cells from older fetuses and not the cells involved in the Australia's legislation.

Although a supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, Dr Kerr also said it was "not accurate" to cite his research because it was not approved for publication.

As Professor Trounson was asked to explain himself, the Government forced the stem-cell debate out of the House of Representatives chamber to the main committee after advice from Liberal strategists that it was distracting people from the Government's agenda.

The most senior government opponent to the bill, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, said yesterday: "If we can't believe leading scientists, the major proponents to give us the real truth, the real parameters for this debate, how are we as a society to form the right judgments?"

"We need a full explanation now from Professor Trounson, who after all is the beneficiary from a very substantial research grant from the commonwealth Government of over $40 million," he said.

Mr Anderson also said that NSW Premier Bob Carr had "peddled the video" and had "severely overplayed" expectations of cures from the bill before parliament.

But Mr Carr said he did not believe MPs had been misled by the video footage.

Ageing Minister Kevin Andrews said he was disappointed and accused Professor Trounson of misleading the public and politicians.

Professor Trounson told federal MPs last week that in the US after human embryonic stem cells were injected into crippled rats "the animals walked again and had control of bowel and bladder function".

Dr Kerr said the video of the crippled rats walking again was made 15 to 18 months ago after using germ stem cells from older fetuses.

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