Hybrid and Chimera Embryos
05/04/2007

Nigel M. de S. Cameron
President, Institute on Biotechnology and the Human Future, Chicago
Chair, BioCentre, London

Some things horrify us, for reasons that may be difficult to explain. We know that being horrified by something does not make it wrong, but neither is our horror irrelevant. Heart transplants horrified many people back in the 1960s; now they are routine. Slavery horrified many people in the early 19th century, and we abolished it - thanks to William Wilberforce’s determined leadership. The latest horror is the prospect of mixing humans and animals to create a “hybrid” or “chimera.”

Of course, it is a hybrid on the smallest possible scale – both in size (just a tiny, early embryo), and in the hybrid factor itself (there are many ways we can put two species together – this one just uses an animal egg to host a cloned human embryo). Should we allow it, even at the early stage of life? The government indicated it would prohibit such research, in response to a public consultation that suggested it was offensive to very many people. Meanwhile the pressure has mounted from scientists and other groups who seem equally horrified that government should prohibit anything at all that they want to do. So when this report from the Commons Science and Technology Committee finds that most scientists want the freedom to do this research, all it amounts to is that scientists don’t like being told no.

In fact it is a thoughtful, thorough piece of work, and (unlike many such documents) is actually worth reading. We may not agree with all its conclusions (I certainly don’t), but it has good things to say and makes considerable efforts to be even-handed.

Cloning hype?
One of our problems in assessing this new technology is that, as so often, the UK is out in the lead – which is both good and bad. The idea of cloning humans using eggs from other species is not new, but people have recoiled with horror when it has been suggested in the past. The basic idea is to use the Dolly cloning technique - take a cell, any cell, from a mature human; empty out an egg; place the cell in the egg, and let the egg persuade the cell to turn into an embryo – but to do it with animal eggs rather than human eggs. The newly created embryo is then destroyed to get at the “stem cells.” And as we all know, stem cells are exciting. Already, so-called “adult” stem cells (that are already in each of our bodies) are being used to treat dozens of diseases. Most scientists believe that embryo stem cells are even more powerful. That has led many to exaggerate, sometimes hugely, their potential for “cures,” as candid observers have noted from all sides of the spectrum (Lord Winston, for example, as well as critics of the technology), as it is likely to be decades before this happens – if it works.

The immediate issue is whether using non-human eggs is more or less disturbing than using human eggs. One reason many of us have been sceptical of the whole “therapeutic cloning” idea lies in the truly vast numbers of eggs that would be needed – a number in the billions – to turn projected stem cell cures through “therapeutic cloning” into routine clinical applications. The only way to get these eggs would be from poor, mainly developing world, women, at the risk of their health. Plainly, using animal eggs would get round this problem.

Some history
Today’s debate in the UK – and the Committee’s report – are compromised by the assumption that it is right for us to clone embryos at all. That debate in turn was shaped by the decision of the Warnock Committee, way back pre-cloning in the 1980s, to recommend that the UK permit the creation of human embryos specifically for research. Warnock made this highly controversial decision by a 9-7 vote. Before the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act was passed, a private member’s bill introduced by the Rt. Hon. Enoch Powell, MP, had overwhelming support in the Commons for a ban on creating embryos for research; it finally failed for procedural reasons.

Some geography
These decisions have put the UK out on a moral and policy limb. Most western democracies countries do not permit embryos to be created for research. So they do not permit cloning embryos. In fact, the one international treaty on the subject (the European Convention on Human Rights and Bioethics) – signed by dozens of European states – specifically outlaws under article 18 the creation of embryos for research. In France – perhaps the world’s most secular country – there is a 7-year prison term awaiting anyone who clones an embryo for research. In Canada, widely seen as the world’s most socially liberal country, it is a 5-year sentence. It is 5 years also in Germany. And the United Nations General Assembly has – by a big majority - called for all human cloning to be prohibited in the UN Declaration on Human Cloning.

Some concluding questions
Of course, none of this means that cloning is necessarily wrong, or that the UK should not allow it. But these are vital facts for those who wish to understand the UK debate and make sense of the latest focus – on the mildest and tiniest form of human-animal hybrid. For more than 20 years the UK has been marching down a different moral road from almost all those other nations that we generally see as our partners – and from which we tend to take our social and cultural benchmarks. The most important lesson to learn from this fact is that what we do with embryos does not have much to do with our views on abortion. The UK media tend to see opposition to cloning as “pro-life” - with an occasional reference to the fact that some on the environmental left are not happy with it either.

But it is part of a far wider discussion about human nature and emerging technologies, that spans genetically-modified (GM) foods on the one hand, and nanotechnology on the other. The questions are going to keep coming. We have huge and growing power over our own nature and that of the plants and animals around us. How are we going to use it? Do we ever actually say No? Are we against GM designer foods but for GM designer babies? Should scientists dictate our science policy, or is that like letting generals tell us when we should go to war? Will scientists ever argue for something without claiming it will give us “cures”? Do we really want robots that are enough like us that they should be accorded “rights”? Should we use members of our own species – even tiny and embryonic members of it – as laboratory material? Does it make it worse or better that we have also brought animal eggs into the picture? Do we really want a Brave New Britain?

The Science and Technology Committee report makes one especially useful recommendation, which is for a parliamentary bioethics committee. (I don’t like the word bioethics; please let’s call it a parliamentary committee on human values and emerging technologies – perhaps on the German model of the Enquete-Kommission with experts alongside parliamentarians.) If the idea is a committee that will genuinely make a point of representing all opinions, this is an excellent proposal. One of the saddest things about the HFEA, which has been the source of many of its woes, is that it has been charged with both regulating technology and advising on new developments. Some of us argued back in 1990 that it needed to be one thing or the other. This dual role has excluded members who are broadly critical of the technology, and left it top-heavy with big names whose contribution to its technical, regulatory function has been unclear and whose largely uncritical approach to new developments has left its general discussions on fresh issues skewed and implausibly one-sided . We need national talking-shops that ventilate all sides of the argument; and, quite separately, regulatory offices that issue licences once the law has been agreed.

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