Activists of the enviromental organisation "Greenpeace" lay bricks to wall in the European Patent Office entrances demonstrating their protest against a patent on a process which could be used to create genetically altered humans in Munich, February 22. The patent was granted to Edinburgh University in December,1999 but the fact that it referred to humans as well as animals - in violation of European law - was only detected by the German branch of Greenpeace, which forced European patent officials into an embarrassing retreat yesterday.

MAD/WS