BRITAIN:The British government has cleared the way for the creation of hybrid embryos that combine human and animal DNA. The decision will help UK scientists keep ahead of competitors in other countries but it has also raised concerns about abuses.
The British government has cleared the way for the creation of hybrid embryos that combine human and animal DNA. The decision will help UK scientists keep ahead of competitors in other countries but it has also raised concerns about abuses.
The draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, published yesterday, will allow scientists to produce "cytoplasmic hybrid embryos" or "cybrid" embryos that are 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal.
The Bill sweeps away a proposed White Paper that specifically banned animal-human cybrids, leading to claims of a U-turn on the issue.
UK health minister Caroline Flint denied that the government had staged a climbdown in discarding the White Paper. She said that while recommending a "general prohibition", the White Paper had always left the door open for specific research to be allowed on a case-by-case basis.
The Bill goes further, however, by permitting human embryos to be altered by the introduction of animal DNA, and also allows human-animal chimeras - human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells.
It retains the existing limits on research, which make it illegal to grow lab embryos for more than 14 days or to implant them into a womb.
Cybrid embryos are made using eggs from rabbits or cows and genetic material from human donors. Use of emptied-out animal eggs in this way overcomes the difficulty of finding enough human eggs, given most of these are "leftover" eggs stored in fertility clinics.
The approach will provide a ready supply of the valuable stem cells sought by researchers. These can be changed into any cell type and scientists argue they could provide cures for intractable conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or damage to spinal cord and nerve cell tissues.
The UK's chief scientific adviser David King yesterday welcomed "the clarity that this draft Bill will give to the scientific community around research using embryos. I believe that the approach to the creation of embryos containing human and animal material is the right one".
Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, head of the division of developmental genetics at the Medical Research Council National Institute for Medical Research, also welcomed the decision.
"In particular, I am very pleased that the draft Bill proposes that research involving mixtures of animal and human material, whether cytoplasmic hybrids or chimeras, ought not to be subject to a ban. This research has many potential benefits for the understanding of disease and for treatments and should not be feared."
But David King the director of charity Human Genetics Alert, which is strongly opposed to the creation of animal-human hybrids, raised the spectre of genetically modified (GM) babies arising from this research.
"Do not be fooled by the claim that this is 'just research'. Once we start down the path to GM babies, it will become very hard to turn back.
"If you don't want GM food, why would you want GM human embryos? While we have been preoccupied with the mouse of animal/human hybrids, the elephant of GM embryos is about to waltz through the door."