Great Britain: The amendment to ban all admixed embryos was defeated by 336 votes to 176. The prohibition on true hybrids was defeated by 286 votes to 223.

British scientists will be allowed to research devastating diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s using human-animal embryos, after the House of Commons rejected a ban yesterday.

An amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill that would have outlawed the creation of “human admixed embryos” for medical research was defeated in a free vote by a majority of 160, preserving what Gordon Brown regarded as a central element of the legislation.

The Government is braced for defeat today, however, on a separate clause that would scrap the requirement that fertility clinics consider a child’s need for a father before treating patients. MPs will also consider amendments tonight that would cut the legal limit for abortion from 24 weeks to 22 or 20 weeks.

A second amendment, which would have banned the creation of “true hybrids” made by fertilising an animal egg with human sperm, or vice-versa, was also defeated yesterday by a majority of 63. Another free vote last night was expected to approve the use of embryo-screening to create “saviour siblings” suitable to donate umbilical cord blood to sick children.

Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough, moving the amendment to ban all admixed embryos, said that mingling animal and human DNA crossed an “ultimate boundary”. He said that exaggerated claims were giving patients false hope and that the dangers of the research were unknown. “In many ways we are like children playing with landmines without any concept of the dangers of the technology we are handling,” he said.

(source)

My question is: What price is too high? Is there no price too high to pay to cure a disease? Think about what we are talking about here. We’re talking about creating human-animal admixed embyros. So, what is that? The process of creating an admixed human-animal embryo is such: the nucleus of both the human and animal eggs are extracted via glass needle, with the nucleus of the human egg injected into the now empty animal egg. Thus you have a human cell nucleus with an animal cell wall, which still contains the animal mitochondria which still retain their animal DNA. The egg then will develop into what is called a “cytoplastic hybrid embryo”, which will contain about 99.9% human DNA and roughly .01% animal DNA. The cell is then “shocked” with an electrical current to induce cell division and development.

Within three to seven days you have a blastocyst, a hollow ball of human-animal cells surrounding the inner cell mass from which human-animal embryonic stem cells can be extracted. You then culture those cells in a lab as you would any other and viola, you have a supply of human-animal embryonic stem cells to play around with.

Now…what’s the purpose of creating a human-animal embryonic stem cells in the first place? None. There’s no purpose. In fact, the .01% concession to animal DNA is counter productive. What you really want, as a researcher, are purely human embryonic stem cells. So why create an abomination, then murder it and loot it for stem cells? Well, because it’s not technically human. It’s a “human-animal admixed embryo”.

Which, of course, doesn’t answer the question at all.

Take a minute and let that sink in. These folks want to (and will, now that they have a green light) create human-animal admixed embryos, 99.9% human, for no other reason than because they’re forbidden to murder pure human embryos to loot them for stem cells instead. They aren’t even preferable to pure human stem cells, it’s just that it’s such a nice bonus that they get to toy around with creating human-animal freaks in the process.

We can’t murder human embryos for our research, they say. So we’ll create human-animal freaks and murder those instead. That’ll show you people for daring to tell us what we can and can’t do in our research. Plus, we’ve got a great justification for creating and toying around with the human-animal genetic freaks we’ve all been dreaming about since we read The Island of Dr. Moreau as a kid.

These people are every bit the murdering amoral mad scientists that have graced the plot lines of pulp fiction for ages. They should all be shot, every last one of them. They don’t care about healing anyone, they’re mad scientists. Willing to do anything novel, break any ground, without consideration for morality or even rationality. As long as they’re having fun and reaping praise for their accomplishments, murdering embryos and creating hybrid freaks is of no concern whatsoever. In fact, that just make the whole thing all the more interesting.

Furthermore, anyone who objects is clearly a ignorant person. Because they don’t understand just how fun this stuff is.