You Say Chimera, and I Say…

The Washington Post reports that the British parliament has passed a bill that authorizes inserting genetic material from humans into cow eggs in order to study diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. Any resulting embryos would not be allowed to live longer than 14 days. Researchers use cow eggs because obtaining human eggs is difficult due to ethical concerns about payment and risks to women donors.

The parliament vote followed an unprecedented national debate, with medical organizations joining in support of the bill and religious groups in opposition. Those opposed claimed that “no other country” had laws allowing this kind of research (though the U.S. government does not ban it), and that it jeopardizes “the ultimate boundary” between humans and animals (though one would have thought that compassion was “the ultimate boundary”), and that the experiment would be of “Frankenstein proportion.”

Scientists have already employed this technique in the UK under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). A team at Newcastle created chimeric embryos in this way last month. No Frankenstein sightings thus far, but Science Progress will keep you posted.

Tags: bioethics, genetics

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