Human-animal hybrid embryos should be legal says Catholic Church

Ruth Gledhill
The Times
Nov. 26, 2007

The Roman Catholic Church has called for women to be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory.

Embryos injected with animal cells, or chimeras, should be treated as human beings where they have a preponderance of human genes, the bishops say in a sumbission to a Government committee.

And there should be no ban on implanting such hybrid embryos in the womb of the woman who supplied the original egg, they say in their submission on the Draft Tissue and Embryos Bill.

“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so,” the bishops say.

The Bill proposes overhauling the regulation for embryo research and fertility treatment.

At present it is illegal in Britain to create embryos using a mix of human and animal genetic material, but the government is proposing to allow scientists to create human-animal embryos for research as long as they are destroyed within two weeks.

In their submission, the bishops say that most of the procedures covered by the bill should not be licensed under any circumstances. They argue that this is because they violate human rights.

Under the proposed legislation, scientists would be allowed in principle to produce “cytoplasmic” hybrid embryos that are 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal.

It would also give permission for human embryos to be altered by the introduction of animal DNA and would allow human-animal “chimeras” - human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells.

In all cases it would be illegal for embryos to grow for more than 14 days - beyond the size of a pinhead - or be implanted into a womb.

The Bill would ban the creation of “true hybrids” by fusing the egg and sperm of humans and animals.

In a letter sent in with the submission, the Most Rev Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, says the Catholic Church was opposed in principle to “destructive experimentation” on human embryos.

The government initially proposed to ban the creation of chimeras but changed its mind earlier this year under pressure from the scientific community.

The Pope today backed the use of adult stem cell research distinguishing it from the manipulation of stem cells from human embryos, which the Roman Catholic Church condemns.

Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience, the Roman Catholic leader referred to the use of adult stem cells to treat heart problems, being discussed at a global conference in Rome. “On this matter the position of the Church, supported by reason and by science, is clear,” he said, “Scientific research must be encouraged and promoted, so long as it does not harm other human beings, whose dignity is inviolable from the very first stages of existence.”