The British press erupted last night with news that a team at Newcastle University has produced the UK’s first animal-human hybrids: embryos made with cow eggs and inserted human DNA (the Guardian has a comprehensive report).

Human-animal hybrid embryos have been made elsewhere before, although progress in the lab has been limited. Hui Sheng of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences published a report on rabbit-human hybrid embryos in 2003 (although that was tricky to get published; see this profile in Nature Medicine; paper in Cell Research), and others have since followed (there’s a great background briefing on the topic in the Guardian, published earlier this year). Such work is done simply because animal eggs are easier to obtain than human ones. It has not as yet progressed very far; hybrids have been made, but not much done with them.

This work is creating news because it is a UK first (albeit an as-yet-unpublished and un-peer-reviewed first – it was announced by the BBC rather than in a scientific report), and because the UK, often considered a world leader in embryology, is gearing up to have a parliamentary vote on new proposed human fertilisation and embryology legislation next month. There has been much in the news in recent weeks on dithering about how this vote will be taken – whether ministers will be able to vote ‘freely’ with their personal moral values, or have to follow party lines (this ended in a compromise; Press Association) – and how the catholic church is generally against it all (Press Association). The result will impact on hybrid embryo work in the future. So announcing a ‘success’ now may have political implications. It was well known that the lab had a license to do this work, that it was actively on the case, and that it’s possible, so their progress is not necessarily surprising.

New Scientist has attacked the group for announcing the achievement through the media rather than through a scientific publication. The Independent focuses on the ethical debate. Not many organisations outside the UK gave it any coverage at all, and those that did may have been under the impression that it was a world first, not mentioning previous achievements in the field (eg. Life Scientist, Australia).