Bioethics: British team makes mixed human animal embryos

UK Times:

Embryos containing both human and animal material have been created in Britain for the first time, a month before the House of Commons is to vote on new laws to regulate the controversial research.

A team at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne announced tonight that it had successfully generated “admixed embryos” by adding human DNA to empty cow eggs, in the first experiment of its kind in the UK.

The achievement will heighten debate over the ethics of human-animal embryos, as the Commons prepares to debate the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill next month.

... [This research], however, has been vociferously opposed by religious groups, particularly the Roman Catholic church. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Catholic church in Scotland, described the work last month as “experiments of Frankenstein proportion”.

My bioethics essay on this research: Human-Animal Hybrids and the Catholic Response (9/20/07)

My previous report on this story: Human/animal hybrid embryos will be created 'within months' (1/18/08)