Financial Times Editorial - Protect research from hybrid horror fantasies

Financial Times Editorial - Protect research from hybrid horror fantasies
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: January 8 2007 02:00 | Last updated: January 8 2007 02:00


At first hearing, it sounds like a horror film recipe for making a half-human hybrid: transfer the nucleus of a human cell to a cow or rabbit egg, give a jolt of electricity and watch the chim-eric embryo grow. In reality, it is a promising procedure for cloning embryonic stem cells from patients with incurable diseases, without consuming precious human eggs. Sadly, however, the government seems to be judging the new human-animal embryo procedure more by its potential to generate scary headlines than by its real potential to advance medical research.

Health ministers proposed banning the creation of hybrid embryos in a white paper on fertility last month, and scientists expect the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the regulator, to turn down three research applications this week.

A negative outcome would be extremely damaging for Britain's reputation as a world leader in both the regulation and practice of stem cell science. Until now legislation has taken account of the real risks and benefits of research - and of serious ethical concerns. The ministers' opposition to hybrid embryos, in contrast, is apparently based on fear and ignorance.

This reaction may have been partly the fault of scientists who had not bothered previously to spell out why they need to use animal eggs for human cloning research. Last week, to their credit, the scientists put things right, holding a high-profile press -conference at the Science Media Centre in London. They explained that plentiful cow or rabbit eggs could take the place of extremely scarce human eggs in therapeutic cloning, to produce embryonic stem cells from people suffering from Parkinson's, motor neurone disease and other degenerative disorders. The animal DNA is removed in the process, giving stem cells whose genes are almost entirely human.

There were signs at the weekend that the scientists' intervention might work. In an off-the-cuff remark during a hospital visit on Friday, Tony Blair, prime minister, said the government was "not dead set against" the research. But the immediate priority will be for the HFEA to avoid an outright rejection of the three applications when it meets on Wednesday, even if it cannot bring itself to approve them then.

If the worst happens and hybrid embryo research is banned in Britain, similar experiments will still take place elsewhere. Indeed, in a vivid illustration of the new vitality of Chinese bioscience, researchers in Shanghai were the first to demonstrate that the procedure worked. American scientists, who can do almost anything if they avoid federal funding, are also working on it. But the world will lose out if it cannot use Britain's scientific expertise in one of the most promising fields of stem cell research. And the robustly pro-science reputation that the present government has carefully built up for Britain will suffer serious harm.