Health minister reassures over hybrid embryos
Tuesday, 20 May 2008 09:17
Politicians voted in favour of allowing hybrid embryo research
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Health minister Dawn Primarolo has reassured people that safeguards will be in place for controversial research that was backed by MPs last night.
Politicians voted in the Commons to allow scientists to create hybrid embryos for research that could help to find new treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's.
The embryos are made using animal eggs and human DNA and although they would be destroyed by 14 days concerns have been raised about the ethical implications of the process.
Conservative MP Edward Leigh, who led a cross-party campaign against hybrid embryos, has said there is no evidence their creation will lead to cures.
"What we are talking about here is something extreme; about mixing animal and human embryos and creating something which is not a monster in the sense that it's large and hairy and horrible, but that is a monstrous creation, it is an abnormality," he told Channel 4 News after the vote.
"It is mucking around with human and animal life, exploiting the animal kingdom."
But Ms Primarolo said she is confident that the human fertilisation and embryology bill, which includes provisions for hybrid embryos, has the necessary regulation to build on previous bills on the same issue.
"I am confident that this bill continues to provide the shape of the regulation to ensure that we know what is going on, we are making sure that it is in the areas that we want to see, and that we put the necessary safeguards on it," she told BBC 2's Newsnight.
MPs also voted last night in favour of creating so-called 'saviour siblings', infants who are selected to be able to help seriously ill brothers or sisters.
Today they will turn their attention to proposals to lower the abortion limit from 24 weeks and on the need for a father in fertility treatment.
