It seems science has finally caught up with linguistic slippery slopes as its now taking advantage of grey areas of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HEFA). The UK newspapers are filled with headings such as Frankenstein rabbit, British scientists to make Frankenstein bunny and 99.9% human genetic material. Though, a quick Google search on the topic ranks Eduardo Kac’s Alba the top Frankenstein bunny. The fuss is naturally about stem-cell research and finding cures to critical diseases that may arise later in human life. Stem-cell research opens a major ethical issue as it deals with embryos at an early stage that is thought to be a pre-state and not yet human. The team is made up most famously of Ian Willmut, (who cloned Dolly and fertilized a frozen embryo creating the calf Frosty) scientists at Kings College London by using research from Chinese scientists. The Chinese research results show that hybrid embryos can be used to study human diseases.
So why the grey shades? Professor Alison Murdoch (University of Newcastle) said in newspaper comments that You have to ask the question, if you take a human nucleus and put it into a rabbit cell, is it a human embryo? adding Is there any harm in a human embryonic stem-cell line made from a rabbit egg?
The procedure involves placing nucleus of human cell inside rabbits egg, these hybrid embryos would not be allowed to develop for longer than 14 days nor be implanted into a woman’s womb.
