Antonia Tully, blogpost

A team of Chinese and US scientists has carried out an experiment mixing human cells with those of a monkey (the long tailed macaque).  Human stem cells were injected into monkey embryos which lived for 20 days.

The mind boggles at the thought of what sort of creature this would turn into had the embryos lived longer or even been born. A man-monkey? This belongs to the realm of science fiction, surely. It’s macabre. And it’s wrong.

“It is always wrong”, says the director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, David Albert Jones, “deliberately to create a being of uncertain and perplexing moral status. Did these embryos have a share in human dignity?”

The special dignity of humans means that they should not be degraded in the way Dr Jones describes. Mixing up essential components of human with non-human species to create a new entity is a violation of the sanctity of human life.  

Others have raised a note of alarm. Dr Anna Smajdor of the University of East Anglia’s Norwich Medical School has said that part human, part animal chimeras pose “significant ethical and legal challenges.”

There are two important points here. Firstly, experiments mixing human and non-human cells are not new.  The UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 allows animal and human material to be mixed to create hybrid or chimera “admixed” embryos which can be kept alive for 14 days.  No sooner had this Act reached the statute book than two research groups were given permission to create hybrid embryos with the stated aim of developing “new therapies for debilitating human conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and stroke”.

This leads to my second point. We should be wary of the claim that experiments using human embryos, or what may be human embryos, are needed to cure disease. In fact, the track record of trying to use human embryos to find cures for disease is very poor. 

The early excitement about harvesting stem cells from tiny human embryos soon faded. One reason for this is that scientists discovered that uncontrolled growth of embryonic stem cells produces tumours, limiting the usefulness of these cells. By contrast, the use of adult stem cells and blood stem cells from umbilical cord has long proved effective in treating disease and is also ethical.

In addition, there were public objections to human embryo stem cell research on moral, religious and ethical grounds. Further, the development of induced pluripotent stem cells, for example adult skin or blood cells, produces near-identical properties to human embryo stem cells.

Dr James Sherley, a biological engineer and the founder of Asymmetrex, an adult stem cell research centre in the US, has said that to date, embryonic stem cells have not been used successfully to treat any illness. 

The Chinese/US team have justified their tampering with human and monkey cells, saying that the experiment was done “to understand and improve human health”.  Professor Savulescu of Oxford University warns that “it is only a matter of time before human-non-human chimeras are successfully developed, perhaps as a source of organs for humans”.

This is a truly abhorrent prospect. Of course we want to understand and improve human health. But not at any cost. It is not acceptable to manipulate public opinion in favour of human/animal creatures with ambiguous status with promises of health benefits for humans.  We don’t know where these experiments will end. It is cruel to raise the hopes of, for example, patients with failing organs.

The really important message, however, is this: Even if experiments using human embryos or creating human/animal creatures with ambiguous status did produce wonder cures and benefits, they would still be wrong. Human beings can never be the subject of scientific experiments unless certain criteria are met. These are:

• Informed consent (by the research subject or their legal guardian in the case of children or disabled persons).
• No undue pain, suffering, injury (physical or mental), or death.
• Scientifically sound experimentation.

Human embryo research, including human/monkey chimera research, meets none of these standards.

Back in 2007 SPUC fought hard against the proposals in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. SPUC supporters delivered over half a million leaflets door to door calling on the public to write to their MP to oppose the bill which allowed the creation of human/animal hybrids and chimeras. Parliament defeated us. But nature, or God, defeated the scientists. SPUC will continue to protect unborn humans from unethical scientific experiments.