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A prominent Christian group sent a letter this week to senators, urging their support to ban research experiments that create embryos by fusing human and animal cells.
Focus on the Family called senators to co-sponsor the "Human-Animal Hybrid Protection Act of 2007," introduced in November by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) who has called the experiments "horrifying."
Britain’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has already approved such research to be conducted at King's College London and Newcastle University.
"These hybrids blur the lines between human and animal, male and female, parent and child," states the letter written by Focus on the Family.
The research involves transferring nuclei containing DNA from human cells to animal eggs that have had nearly all their genetic information removed. The resulting hybrids are 99.9 percent human and 0.1 percent animal.
Many Christians, both in Britain and the United States, argue that the experiments violate human dignity.
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"To suggest it’s appropriate to use animal or human eggs and combine them with animal or human sperm, which is one of the proposals in the new (British) legislation, is absolutely horrifying," said Josephine Quintavalle, co-founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, according to Focus on the Family's publication, Citizenlink.
The Human Fertilization and Embryology Bill will face the UK House of Commons later this year. It is strongly backed by the government and expected to become law next year.
In response, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales is urging churches to write to their MP and get involved to protest the bill.
The Catholic bishops contends that the bill allows scientists to "create embryos that are half human, half animal" and that it violates human dignity. They also say Members of Parliament may tack on an amendment to make abortion more easily available, according to a statement the churches read to their congregations this past week.
Rejecting the Catholic statement, Lyle Armstrong of the second lab at Newcastle University said, "We are very disturbed that the Catholic bishops claim the bill will allow us to create half-human, half-animal embryos."
The scientists argue that the resulting embryos after implanting an adult human cell into an animal egg contains only human genes.
"The aim of our experiments is to discover ways to make stem cells [to treat] human diseases," Armstrong added, "not to give birth to some abnormal chimera."
While some Christians support scientific research, they say legislation is needed to draw the line.
"We want a powerful and vibrant science sector," said Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, according to Citizenlink, "but there are ethical parameters that we need in this research."
