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CURRENT
ISSUE: July 2, 2007
VOL.
45, NO. 13Oakland,
CA
Debate rages on Britain’s proposal
to legalize human-animal hybrids
Researchers
say animal-human embryos will offer insights into possible cures
LONDON (CNS)
-- In ancient mythology, the chimera was a fire-breathing creature made
up of the parts of various animals. Typically, it was portrayed with the
head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a serpent.
It was hardly a surprise, therefore, that the announcement in May that
the British Parliament is proposing a bill to legalize the laboratory
creation of human-animal hybrids caused something of a stir.
The demand for legislation to create interspecies embryos is being driven
with great enthusiasm by members of the scientific community. Researchers
claim that experimentation on animal-human embryos will offer insights
into possible cures for certain cancers and such conditions as Alzheimer’s
and motor neuron diseases.
At least two British teams have already applied for licenses to create
“cytoplasmic hybrids” or “cybrids,” in which human
DNA is added to an empty animal egg to form an embryo that is 99.9 percent
human.
Besides allowing this technique, the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill
would also permit the creation of chimeras, formed when animal cells are
added to human embryos, and transgenic human embryos, created by injecting
animal DNA into a human embryo.
In all cases, the bill stipulates that the embryos must be destroyed within
two weeks and cannot be implanted into a woman.
Only true hybrid embryos, formed when animal sperm fertilizes a human
egg or vice versa, would be illegal.
But in mid-June Britain’s influential Academy of Medical Sciences
concluded in a report that there was no compelling moral or ethical reason
why such research should not be allowed.
Josephine Quintavalle of the public lobby group Comment on Reproductive
Ethics told Catholic News Service June 27 that the bill is very likely
to pass through the houses of Parliament in the fall. She said that it
was also structured in such a way that the government could approve new
advances without recourse to Parliament.
“I think that the
overall nature of the bill is more important than the contents,”
said Quintavalle, a Catholic.
“Anything that could happen in the future is not prohibited but
can be permitted just by altering the definition,” she explained.
Part of the problem, she added, was that science had become a new “fundamentalism”
in Britain.
“Politicians are increasingly reluctant to engage in genuine scrutiny
of the claims made by scientists, particularly in the field of embryonic
stem cells,” said Quintavalle. “The evidence base presented
in this field has been particularly inadequate. A colossal amount of time
has been wasted justifying the creation of interspecies embryos without
robust scientific counterarguments.
“The debate has been presented erroneously as simply a battle between
pro-life or religious absolutists and a united secular scientific community,”
she added.
In the eyes of the Church, however, the moral case against the creation
and killing of such embryos is overwhelming.
Such a view was expounded in a June 20 joint submission by the Catholic
Bishops of England and Wales and the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics
to a parliamentary committee set up to scrutinize the bill.
The bishops and Linacre said that where there was a preponderance of human
genetic material, for example, in cybrids, such creations should be considered
human and should enjoy full human rights, including a right to life.
In a separate submission obtained June 27 by CNS, the Linacre Centre further
argued that it was morally wrong to even create interspecies embryos that
could not be considered human.
On top of all this are the claims from some scientists that the research
is unlikely to bear any positive results.
Among the critics is Colin McGuckin, professor of regenerative medicine
at the University of Newcastle, England, and an internationally respected
researcher in the field of adult stem cells derived from umbilical cords.
He told CNS June 27 that what had been vital to most of the breakthroughs
in stem-cell technology was the ability to match tissue types, thereby
radically reducing the risk of the body rejecting tissue it detects as
foreign.
“The best potential transplant you could have is from ‘you’
to ‘you,’” he explained, adding that for this reason
there was no advantage in developing interspecies embryos for such techniques.
