UK to Allow Creation of Human-Animal Hybrid Embryos

Under a new bill likely to be approved by the UK government, scientists may fuse human and animal cells to conduct research on serious diseases. The decision reverses the UK government's ban on such research.

The hybrid embryos -- alternatively dubbed "chimeras" -- wouldn't be allowed to grow for more than 14 days or be implanted in a womb, but the bill has drawn predictable outrage:

... Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on
Reproductive Ethics, disagreed, saying: "It is appalling that the government has bowed to pressure from the random collection of self-interested scientists and change its prohibitive stance.

"This is a highly controversial and terrifying proposal, which has little justification in science and even less in ethics.

"Endorsement by the UK government will elicit horror in Europe and right across the wider world."

Quite frankly, I don't understand how hybrid embryos could be "terrifying."

Some people worry that today's hybrid embryo is tomorrow's man-pig, but the bill forbids implantation, and the "slippery slope" argument just doesn't hold here. The nature of regulation is to establish arbitrary boundaries and honor them; in a very related way, that's the philosophical underpinning for a woman's right to have an abortion.

So unless one sees a 14-day-old collection of cells as a fully cognizant entity, or believes that the genetic continuity of individual cells is innately sacrosanct, what's the big deal?

Related Wired coverage here.

Ban lifted to allow animal-human embryos [The Independent]

Ministers bow to hybrid pressure [BBC]