Legislation & Lobbying
Christians Sue Over U.K. Human-Animal Embryo Licenses
Posted Apr 9, 2008, 03:39 pm CDT
By Martha Neil
A Christian group that includes lawyers and doctors says it will sue to try to overturn licenses granted to academics at two United Kingdom institutions to create human-animal hybrid embryos for medical research purposes.
One such embryo reportedly has already been created under the licenses granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to Newcastle University and King's College London, according to the BBC.
The High Court challenge by the Christian Legal Centre and the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics is expected to focus on a claim that the HFEA, when it granted the licenses, acted outside the scope of the powers granted to the independent regulator under legislation dating back to 1990. (Additional legislation is now being considered in Parliament.)
Specifically, the issue apparently is likely to boil down to whether human stem cells implanted in animal embryos constitute human embryos as defined in existing statutory law. At least one member of Parliament says they do, because, as the BBC puts it, "all their chromosomal DNA is human."
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