Scientists went toe to toe with the Catholic Church last week over legislation on embryo research that is currently making its way through the UK’s parliament.
A statement from the assembly of Catholic bishops in England and Wales read out in catholic churches claimed the legislation would, “allow scientists to create embryos that are half human, half animal. For example from the egg of a woman and sperm from an animal. To do this would be a radical violation of human dignity.” A number of scientists came out to denounce this as downright false.
“The Catholic Bishops’ statement on hybrids is not a radical violation of human dignity as they claim – it is a radical violation of the truth! The cloning technique removes all the animal DNA in the nucleus of an unfertilized egg and replaces it with an adult human cell that can then be reprogrammed to generate embryonic stem cells. It is a sperm free process,” says Chris Shaw, a professor of neurology and neurogenetics at King’s College London (via the Science Media Centre, no online press release).
Lyle Armstrong, a researcher at Newcastle University, adds, “We are very disturbed that Catholic bishops claim that the bill will allow us to create ‘half human-half animal embryos’ since this is a gross and irresponsible misrepresentation of our position and our intentions in carrying out our work.”
A Catholic church spokesman told the Daily Mail, “Clause 4 allows licences to be given for the creation of hybrid and ‘interspecies’ embryos, defined in the Bill as ‘an embryo created by using human gametes and animal gametes’. This means half human and half animal.” Among other misconceptions, the idea that mixtures can only ever be half and half suggests that you do not want to have this man mix you a Martini.
On the “sperm free” front, there is in fact an experimental procedure that mixes eggs and sperm from animals and people – the “hamster test” to check on the viability of sperm. If this is what the bishops had in mind it’s interesting that they changed the sexual symbol before their denunciation – animal sperm violating human eggs sounds so much nastier. But it seems unlikely the bishops were thinking of the hamster test at all because a) it doesn’t actually lead to proper fertilization, b) it’s already legal and c) frankly they don’t seem to have researched the whole thing that thoroughly.
The story has also made it into New Scientist (subscription required).
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