In an attempt to create cheap and safe stem cells, several researchers applied yesterday to mix human cells with rabbit, goat and cow eggs.
Researchers hope that the radical technique will offer them the chance to avoid using human eggs.
Scientists believe that the resulting hybrid embryos would be 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal, and that the experimental embryos would be destroyed before they turned 14 days old.
However opponents of stem cell research labeled the human-cow hybrid plan “abhorrent.”
British laws prevent scientists combining human and animal eggs or sperm, but there have been exceptions in the past.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will assess the applications.
Plan to create human-cow embryos
By Fergus Walsh - BBC News, Medical correspondent
UK scientists have applied for permission to create embryos by fusing human DNA with cow eggs.
Researchers from Newcastle University and Kings College, London, have asked the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority for a three-year licence.
The hybrid human-bovine embryos would be used for stem cell research and would not be allowed to develop for more than a few days.
But critics say it is unethical and potentially dangerous.
Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris - a member of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee - said: “If human benefit can be derived by perfecting therapeutic cloning techniques or from research into subsequently-derived stem cells, then it would actually be immoral to prevent it just because of a ‘yuck’ factor.”
Stem cell research is one of the most promising areas of medical science.
Stem cells are the body’s master cells and five-day-old embryos are packed with them - each with the potential to turn into any tissue in the body.
It is this ability which scientists want to harness to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, strokes and Alzheimer’s Disease.
To do that, they need to have access to thousands of embryos for research.
Short supply
The problem is that human eggs for research are in short supply and to obtain them women have to undergo surgery.
That is why scientists want to use cows’ eggs as a substitute.
They would insert human DNA into a cow’s egg which has had its genetic material removed, and then create an embryo by the same technique that produced Dolly the Sheep.
The resulting embryo would be 99.9% human; the only bovine element would be DNA outside the nucleus of the cell.
It would, though, technically be a chimera - a mixing of two distinct species into one.
The aim would be to extract stem cells from the embryo when it is six days old, before destroying it.
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