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For health and legal professionals with an interest in bioethics
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Experiments threaten dignity
IN two experiments straight out of The Island of Dr Moreau, overseas researchers have created hybrid embryos by crossing animals with humans. In August, a US-trained scientist in Shanghai, China, revealed she had fused human chromosomes with rabbit eggs. And a US fertility expert has created cow-human embryos. These hybrids have a full set of human chromosomes mingled with animal DNA. Dr Hui Zhen Sheng, of Shanghai Second Medical University, says her team created 400 cross-species embryos, with 100 of them developing to the blastocyst stage -- where you can see organs beginning to take shape. Dr Panayiotis Zavos, of the Kentucky Center for Reproductive Medicine and IVF, has created 600 or 700 embryos, with 200 developing to the blastocyst stage. The fact that both Zavos and Sheng insisted that they would not implant the embryos into a woman's womb and that they had broken no laws does not matter. The law is the defender of human dignity, not its source. Thankfully, such experiments are forbidden in Australia. But however distant they might be, surely they still had some news value? After all, claims of successful human cloning by the loopy Raelian cult have been reported around the world. But, astonishingly, these hybrids have gone almost unremarked by the media and the scientific community. The ethical dilemmas involved with sheep exports have received far more coverage. Why have we become so jaded at the manipulation of human life? The answer must be that the abuse of embryos in Australia and overseas is so commonplace we have lost our capacity for revulsion. By the time the nightmare of science fiction became science fact, we had exhausted our ethical reservoirs. Disgust has been leached by years of scientists pushing the envelope. In the past few months, gods in white coats announced the cultivation of eggs from aborted fetuses, developed new embryo sex-selection methods, screened embryos for non-fatal genetic defects, and created ``saviour siblings'', embryos whose tissue can be used as medicine for a child. Cow-human hybrids are merely the next step in the progressive degradation of the status of the embryo. Nonetheless, the silence of Australian stem cell scientists and IVF specialists is worrying. You would think they would want to distance themselves from their colleagues' rogue experiments. Instead, they have said nothing. Not so overseas. A few cloning experts were actually positive towards the Chinese experiments. Robin Lovell-Badge, of the UK's National Institute for Medical Research, said he was impressed, as was Harvard University's Douglas Melton. So the reason for the buttoned lips may have nothing to do with being media-shy. In fact, when it came to lobbying for embryo research, our scientific community spruiked in a manner to put used-car salesmen to shame. Instead, those hybrid embryos might be a useful option for them in stem cell research. At the moment, Parliament has declared a three-year moratorium on so-called therapeutic cloning. With this process, a cloned embryo is created and then destroyed for its stem cells. The problem is that the number of human eggs that will be needed to support therapeutic cloning as a useful medical tool is astronomical. And sourcing them will be an enormous problem. Cheaper and more abundant rabbit and cow eggs might prove a useful alternative at some stage. If this proves to be the case, Australian scientists might be able to use their formidable lobbying powers to reverse the ban on human hybrids. And if it doesn't, why don't they speak up and denounce the hybrid experiments? It's time our scientists said where they stand.
MICHAEL COOK edits Australasian Bioethics Information.
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