Washington D.C., Apr 29, 2008 / 21:18 pm
On Thursday Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives a bill that would ban the creation, transfer, or transportation of part-human, part-animal hybrids.
While there are many ethical objections to the creation of human-animal hybrids, additional concerns about disease transmission and environmental effects are also being increasingly considered.
Researchers are presently perfecting hybrid embryo creation techniques, in which genetic material from humans and animals are combined in a single embryo. The BBC recently reported that scientists at Newcastle University successfully created part-human, part-animal hybrids for the first time in the United Kingdom.
The bill presents several scenarios where the creation of human-animal hybrids would be forbidden. The law would ban introducing animal cells into a human embryo, which the bill says “makes its humanity uncertain.” It would ban fertilizing a human egg with non-human sperm and fertilizing an animal egg with human sperm. Likewise, it would forbid creating an embryo both by introducing a non-human nucleus into a human egg and by introducing a human nucleus into a non-human egg.