British Academy To Look Into Ethics of Human-Animal Genetic Hybrids
But are they locking the barn door after the horse-men have cantered out? When former President Bush mentioned human-animal hybrids during a State of the Union speech in 2006, most of the audience probably sat scratching their heads for a second. However, in the years since then, transplanting human genes into animals, whether to make better milk or study human diseases, has become a bigger and bigger issue. Now, a year after English scientists implanted human stem cells into bovine egg cells, Britain's Academy of Medical Sciences has launched a study to determine the ethics of creating human/animal hybrids. The study hopes to mark out the boundary past which genetic mixing becomes unethical. Over the next year, the study will investigate what percentage of DNA constitutes a human, as well as looking at other issues like the creation of human stem cells from animal eggs and the implantation of human cells into...