Playing God

British scientists will be allowed to research diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s using human-animal hybrid embryos, after the House of Commons rejected a ban recently. Advocates of human-animal embryo research say that scientists need every available means possible to research devastating diseases. Critics, on the other hand, say that scientists are promoting a frightening and irreversible future.The main kinds of mixed embryo permitted by the Bill are “cytoplasmic hybrids” or “cybrids”, which are made by moving a human nucleus into an empty animal egg. These are genetically 99.9 per cent human. It allows true hybrids, chimeras that combine human and animal cells, and transgenic human embryos that include animal DNA.

Edward Leigh, British Member of Parliament for Gainsborough, who supported the amendment to ban all human-animal embryos, said that mingling animal and human DNA crossed an “ultimate boundary”. He says exaggerated claims give patients false hope while the dangers of the research are not being considered.

“In many ways we are like children playing with landmines without any concept of the dangers of the technology we are handling,” Leigh said.

At this point, it is legal to culture admixed embryos up to 14 days, but illegal to transfer them to a human or animal womb. But many scientists around the globe want permission to keep embryos alive longer, perhaps even to full term through implantation. Cornell scientists Nikica Zaninovic, who helped create the worlds first genetically modified human embryo says that in order to be sure that a new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally want to keep growing the embryo and carry out further tests.

But ethicists worry that by approving human-animal embryos, lawmakers are opening the door to a future of “enhanced” or “mutant” humans that have animal traits. It is even thought possible to so drastically alter human genomes that a type of superhuman species could emerge.