Friday, January 20, 2006

Fury over embyros
By Nick Weinberg

The chairman of a bio-ethics think-tank has condemned proposals for the creation of hybrid embryos — by fusing human cells with rabbit eggs —as amounting to “ British leadership in the depressing journey towards the brave new world.” Nigel Cameron, chairman of the Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy (CBPP), has expressed deep concern over plans by British scientists to create embryos by combining rabbit eggs with human cells.

Scientists, if granted consent, aim to fuse human cells with rabbit eggs in a bid to further stem cell research into incurable diseases and providing them with a plentiful supply of eggs to experiment with. Dr Cameron said: “It’s no surprise that the hottest news today is that British scientists want to avoid the need for women’s eggs at all by using rabbits. “But this would neatly take us out of the frying pan and into the fire. Creating human-rabbit hybrids for our embryo experiments is worse.” Claire Foster, Church of England Policy Adviser on Science, Medicine, Technology and Environmental Issues, said: “The Church is opposed to the creation of rabbit-human hybrid cloned embryos.”
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