Scientists win right to create human-animal test 'chimeras'

In a dramatic U-turn, Health Minister Dawn Primarolo bowed to pressure from scientists and promised to allow the creation of animal-human "chimeras" for medical research.

Researchers say combining the DNA and cells of humans and animals could lead to new treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.

They stressed that hybrid embryos would be destroyed after 14 days and not allowed to develop into living creatures.

However, ethical campaigners said mixing human and animal genetic material crossed an unacceptable line.

The draft Bill also says that parents should be allowed to create 'saviour siblings' to treat children with "serious" diseases for the first time - not just lifethreatening illnesses.

And rather than taking only stem cells from a newborn donor baby's umbilical cord to help a sick brother or sister, the Bill says doctors should be able to take "other types of tissue and cells".

Although doctors would not be allowed to put a saviour sibling's life at risk by removing a kidney, for example, campaigners say a bone marrow transplant would be permitted.

The Government has also thrown out proposals to create a new "super regulator" for fertility treatments and embryo research, and rejected plans to insist that children born from donor sperm or eggs have the words 'by donor' on their birth certificates.

Other key measures in the revised Bill include a ban on sex selection for non-medical reasons, the recognition of same-sex parents as legal parents, and removing the necessity for IVF clinics to consider the "need for a father" when exercising their duty to take account of an unborn child's welfare.

Yesterday's announcement on hybrids marks an embarrassing about-face for the Government.

Last year, it proposed banning all animal-human embryo hybrids.

By May, when the draft Human Tissue and Embryo Bill was published, it announced that only some hybrid experiments would be banned.

In the previous draft Bill, the Government let scientists create "cytoplasmic" hybrids - embryos which are 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent cow or rabbit.

These are made by inserting a set of human chromosomes - the strands of DNA that contain the instructions on how to build and run a human body - into the hollowed- out egg cell from an animal.

The embryo would develop into a human embryo, providing a source of embryo stem cells for medical experiments.

The revised Bill adds three more types of hybrid: "true" hybrids created by mixing animal and human sperm and eggs; embryos created by adding animal DNA to human embryos and embryos created by adding animal cells to a human embryo.

Any hybrids would have to be destroyed after 14 days and would be created under licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, the Bill says.

Scientists say the new Bill opens the door to research into lifethreatening diseases.

Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society, said: "A compromise to permit the four named types of interspecies embryo under regulation is a positive outcome."

But Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "It's disturbing that the Government wants to put into law the fact that researchers can create true hybrids.

"This is crossing a barrier that should not be crossed. It is against the dignity of humans and animals."

She also described the plan to allow screening of embryos to find a good tissue match for an existing child with a "serious" illness as "horrifying".

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "This puts the Bill in line with the current HFEA guidance - and it does not change the position on what can be used from saviour siblings."