British lawmakers back human-animal embryo research
On Friday I emailed 228 scientists and academics inviting them to sign Declan's petition to the UN on research cloning of embryos and stem cells. And, as usual, the vast majority of the emails went straight to spam boxes (or to cyberspace, see blog of 4 September “Obama: Yes to stem cells, funding”). It didn't matter where I sent them – all I got was a total of six out-of-office autoreplies. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t get a single signature despite that, for example, 90 emails went to scientists in the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry, from where we have four signatories. In fact, from all the emails I sent on 17, 19, 20, 22 and 24 October (115, 132, 285, 312, and 228 respectively) – 1,072 in total – we have only had one signatory (see previous blog “Creationists declare war over the brain”).
On Wednesday, the British lower house of parliament approved legislation allowing scientists to create human-animal “hybrid embryos” for medical research, “in the biggest shake-up of embryology laws in two decades”, reports the Agence France-Presse. (According to the Telegraph, hybrid embryos are known to have been created in America and China. Canada has recently voted to allow them, while India is currently considering the move.)
Despite opposition from religious and pro-life groups, MPs in the House of Commons backed the human embryology and fertilisation bill by 355 votes to 129. The wide-ranging bill, which has been debated for months (see, for example, blog of 20 May “UK parliament backs human-animal embryo research”) would also allow parents with a sick child to create a “saviour sibling” to be harvested for cells to cure their older brother or sister. It will now go to a vote in the House of Lords, and could be law by November.
Urging MPs to back all of the measures, Dawn Primarolo, the health minister, said: “One in seven couples need help with fertility treatment, 350,000 people live with Alzheimer’s, every week there are five children born and three young people die from cystic fibrosis – all issues that this Bill addresses.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose youngest son suffers from cystic fibrosis, attended the Commons in person to vote for the proposals, having urged MPs to back the move.
Hybrid embryos, created by inserting the nuclei of a human cell into an empty animal egg (they are genetically 99.9 per cent human), are a tool for generating disease-specific embryonic stem cells without the need to use donated human eggs; the cells will not be used in patients, but be used to model diseases in the lab, test new therapies and study cloning processes. They can ensure a more plentiful supply of stem cells for use in research into treating conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Our campaign in support of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research and therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), has been greatly simplified. Gone now are the sections I had planned – “Science and Religion”, “Science and the Law” and “Religion in Public Life” – mainly because Declan was right all along: they distract from the campaign. Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International are still our main models. Like Greenpeace UK, we will include in the homepage menu “Blog”, “About NAC”, “What we do” and “Media centre”.
What for Greenpeace UK is the subsection “Climate change” – after you click “What we do” – for us will be “Embryonic stem cell research” and will include the following associated subsections: “Science”, “Law”, “Ethics” and “Applications”. And, as in the Greenpeace International website, each of these associated subsections will be further subdivided; for example, the serious threat to hESC research of the “non-material neuroscience” movement (see previous blog) will be dealt with under “Ethics”. The subsection “Somatic-cell nuclear transfer” will include the same associated subsections. In it, we will publish, for example, all the various letters that have been signed by Nobel Laureates in support of SCNT.
We won’t be announcing Declan’s petition to the UN in this website since I believe it's best if scientists and academics sign it first. What interested person would say no to a petition that has been signed by top scientists and academics from around the world, including 24 Nobel Laureates (as of today)?
